ไม่สามารถเล่นวิดีโอนี้
ขออภัยในความไม่สะดวก
SharpCap Astrophotography Tutorial - Capture the Planets!
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 25 พ.ย. 2022
- SharpCap image capture software is free to down load and easy to use for capturing the planets. In this video we focus and capturing Mars as it reaches its closest approach to Earth. I run through all the steps you need to capture great planetary footage then leave you with a video for the final steps - Stacking and Processing.
Patreon or Channel Membership support really helps me to continue and make better content:
www.patreon.co...
Buy me a coffee here:
www.buymeacoff...
A huge thank you if you choose to help out!!
*Telescopes* (Affiliate Links)
www.firstlight...
*Mounts*
www.firstlight...
*Cameras/Astrophotography*
www.firstlight...
*Eyepieces*
www.firstlight...
*Filters*
www.firstlight...
*Accessories*
www.firstlight...
*Binoculars*
www.firstlight...
A couple of things I forgot to mention! You can set your video capture output to either SER or AVI, I probably should experiment and see what if any difference it makes to the image? Also I'm kicking myself for not showing the histogram tool, you can use this to help set your exposure, many aim to cover around 70% of the histogram.
The best focusing aid is a Bahtinov mask. Focus your telescope first with a Bahtinov mask and you should be set.
Thanks. I have a drawer full of the things just not one large enough for an 8" scope.
I prefer SharpCap for Planetary Astrophotography. Great tutorial and final image, thanks Chris.
You and me both Kevin, thanks mate :)
Good Job! Thanks for sharing, and helping, keep it up
Brilliant tutorial Chris, very clear with some fantastic information. I look forward to following your workflow once the clouds disappear. I may even try to flim it so you can see the results 😀
All the best, Ryan
Hiya. Nice vid. I am very new to this. But learnt quite a bit from you. A question. How do you start the focus process. I have a QHY 533 c attached to 300p dob. Do I add extenders or what. Not sure how to kick this off. Cheers from Australia.
Great tutorial Chris and nice image thanks for sharing your work mate
Cheers Anthony!
Thanks for the video, i see you didnt image mars with the darks and flats procedure then stack all images, why is this?
Thanks
Mike
Excellent demonstration of Sharp Cap I was wondering if you will be making a video showing to take your capture and process it to get a clear image?
Thank you! I do have processing videos on my channel somewhere and sometimes I tag processing run throughs at the end of planetary imaging videos. Here's one th-cam.com/video/9s1xhbYOfRk/w-d-xo.html
Nice Shots Chris. I've been Taking. Lot of photos of Mars Lately! I love that Side of Mars, i beleive it's called syrthis major planum!
Glad you're making the most of Mars whilst it's close mate, yes Syrtis planum (eleavated plain). Thanks for watching :)
Wow. That end result from that little dot that were filmed 🤩👍👍
I only have a super cheap SVBONY camera but I will absolutley give it a try anyway 😀
Go for it!
You can get great results with cheap cameras. Remember, in the early days of CCD astrophotography, people were getting great pics of the planets with consumer webcams that were modified by just removing the lens and replacing with a 1.25" adaptor
Thanks for sharing. 👍🏻👍🏻
Can i use a 200pds on my cem25p ?
For astrophotography in planetary and deep sky
Nice Chris I really should have a go at Mars at some point
Hey Ollie, I would with that C9.25 of yours, you might see the Perseverance rover :D it's another 26 months before Mars will back this close again, give it a go!
can tou turn the volume up
Nice.
Can we use it *without* motorized mount, and let SharpCap do the re-alignment? Did you have a motorized mount in this youtube video ?
You will need to manually move a non motorised mount to keep the object on the sensor. Take a look at this video: th-cam.com/video/cndy6TDRP2M/w-d-xo.html
I’m using sharp cap I enjoy working with exposure and gain . Every time I try to stack it keep quitting due to lacking of hard rice space
Planetary and Lunar imaging fills up my hard drive too, the struggle is real.
Have never owned a telescope or camera before. I insert my zow asi 585 into the eyepiece location, remove the telescope and camera caps, hook the camera up to my laptop, start Sharpcap and the follow given instructions. I end up with a white background or a black background with written instructions printed on the upper left side of the screen.
Sad. Any one have any idea how I could get what the camera sees on my screen?
Thanks.
Can you use sharpcap with asiair ? (On the phone screen)
Thanks very much for a helpful video. Do you use the focus assistant tool on SharpCap? Also, do you use the histogram to pick your exposure setting?
Thanks very much for watching :) I don't know if its just me but I don't seem to get on well the the Sharpcap focus assist, so usually use good old Bahtinov masks when I can. Regarding the histogram, I should have mentioned this, folks tend to aim for around 70% to the right on the histogram.
great content Chris, enjoyed it. I'm new at this stuff, I have a celestron nexstar 130slt. I just purchased and received my ZWO ASI120mc-s. I noticed one other comment/your answer regarding ASI 462mc and 2.5x Barlow, What attachments are you using for the barlow ? I have several attachment tubes and adaptors. Wondering it the barlow in my case with the ASI120mc-s would suffice?
Thanks in advance of your feedback sir.
Hi Roy, I'm glad you liked the video. Congratulations on your new ZWO ASI 120mc. A Barlow lens push fits into the focuser, then you can use the nosepiece adapter that came with your camera to slot the camera into the Barlow like an eyepiece. Adding the Barlow effectively increases your telescopes focal length which has the effect of increasing image scale so the planets look bigger. A 2.5x Barlow would give good image scale and reasonably good 0.4 arcsecond resolution with your 130p. it's probably about right for the telescope :)
@@AstroLaVista Thank you, Chris. I do have a x2barlow. I'll give it try. Also without going into a long spill, I'm using SharpCap pro 4.0. What exposure times, gain should I start out with capturing DSObjects? or the Moon?
Hi, what camera are you using?
Wny i can't see exposure time
Does this do dark and bias frames or do you have to do those on your own?
Hi, you don't need darks or bias for planetary imaging as I'm doing here, but you can use Sharpcap for deep sky imaging captures where darks and bias would apply. For darks use the same method as light frames, only cover the scope with the dust cap and maybe an addition cover to prevent light getting into it by other means, you want it pitch black inside. Take exposures the same length as your light frames with the same gain settings and same camera orientation. Name the file darks for easy identification afterwards. I personally wouldn't bother with bias. I used to take them but I could never see a difference so stopped. It's been years but I'm pretty sure it's like taking darks but with the fasted exposure time/shutter speed possible, and again keep the gain and orientation the same as for your lights and darks. Sharpcap does live stacking EAA (electronic assisted astronomy) type imaging, but for conventional deep sky imaging open these files in deep sky stacker (DSS), and stack all these files together before saving the master file of the lights, flats, darks etc. Finally open the stacked image in your preferred image processing software so you can bring out detail and put your personal touch on the image. I like GIMP because it's free, but a lot of folks pay for Pixinsight.
@@AstroLaVista I do darks and bias on everything but only a few of each for planetary stuff. I usually do 50 darks and bias when I am doing DSO stuff. I honestly don't see a need to do any more, especially if the exposure is long. It will add a lot of time outside.
SharpCap doesn't have built-in stacking? I understand other programs are better at it, but was hoping to just dip my toe into the water with one program...
1:33 _"Low gain = low noise"_ I was under the impression it was the opposite way around, and that more gain gives you less noise?
Gain in video is like ISO in photography - the higher the Gain/ISO the noisier the image will be. You can put this to the test if your Android or iPhone has manual camera controls. Take a picture at high and low ISO and check the noise.
@@AstroLaVista I'm pretty sure it doesn't work this way with dedicated astro cameras. If you look on the camera website, at the spec sheet and graphs, it shows that noise decreases with gain. I replied earlier but TH-cam may have deleted the comment because I put a link to the camera you were using in the video.
There's also the unity gain (for the ASI462MC it's 80), where the camera switches modes, and it gives you a significant decrease in noise, and an increase in the dynamic range, above 80 gain.
You can probably see from the graphs on the ZWO website that 75 gain (as in your video) is probably one of the worst places to be!
I'm a beginner, so there might be something I'm missing, but this seems to be the general consensus.
@@JoeBob79569The read noice, at least of current CMOS astro cameras, indeed decreases with increasing gain, while other types of noise usually increase. At some point, they become visible. Full well capacity will decrease, as well as dynamic range. If the camera has an HCG mode, RN will drop suddenly at that point, while DR might increase to almost the starting value. Afterwards, the general tendencies will resume. Btw., the gain at which HCG kicks in is not necessarily unity gain.
Nice, if you can get the weather for it... 🙄
Yep, it has been raining...alot!