SharpCap now does live stacking for the Moon and Planets

[PeterC65]

It wasn't the best night for observing. I will try again when we eventually get a really clear still night, assuming Jupiter is still around!

 

[PeterC65]

I've re-run the captured sessions from last night and created snapshots and time lapse files using the same settings so that I could compare them side by side. It seems there is a bug in SharpCap that means snapshots don't work when capturing frames so I didn't have any snapshots from the live session last night.

The x2.4 Barlow images were only captured at a gain of x400 and that seems to be the main cause of the fuzziness, as the x1.7 Barlow images were also much more fuzzy at this gain. On the whole though, I could still see more detail with less magnification.

More testing is needed before Jupiter disappears.

Last night I also tried the new surface stabilisation method on a section of the Moon (with no Barlow) and that worked very well.

 

[Ags]

21 hours ago, PeterC65 said:

For the first image I posted above the stack was 1000 frames with 24ms exposure and a gain of 210 which is my cameras LCG / HCG switching point. Fine Sharpening was set to 1.000.

For the second one it was 500 frames with 54ms exposure and 210 gain, with Fine Sharpening set to 0.800.

That explains the noise difference between yours and mine. My stacks were of only 140 frames, and each frame was 7.5 ms. I think for finding best focus, the stacks will be 100 long or less. Note my jupiter is mis-colored, which is brcause I pushed up the saturation to make some details more visible.

Edited December 30, 2023 by Ags

[PeterC65]

17 minutes ago, Ags said:

I think for finding best focus, the stacks will be 100 long or less.

I was using a stack length of 20 for focusing last night. With that I could see the atmospheric wobble and it was just about fast enough to respond to focus changes.

 

[PeterC65]

I finally managed to get a good image of Jupiter last night with the Explorer 200 and x2.4 Barlow. That gives me F12 which is x4.1 my cameras pixel size, so the recommended method. Previously I'd been using too high a gain and too short an exposure.

Last night I set the gain to x210 which is my cameras LCG / HCG switching point and set the exposure just below the white clipping point at 28ms. I was using a 1000 frame stack and adjusted the fine sharpening and wavelet sharpening controls.

Here is the result ...

It's just a pity it wasn't from the night before when the GRS was on display and two moons were transiting!