Thanks mate. Tonight the seeing was pretty bad but I went out after the day's rain. Good transparency and I had a lot of new things to test.
I used Sharpcap instead of FireCapture. I find it's more stable and responsive. Also I really like that you can pan the ROI inside the sensor full frame area. Easier to find stuff and also handy to account for drift without having to move the mount.
I managed much higher frame rates with the native drivers and shot SER in 16bit instead of 8bit for the first time.
I also saved the camera stream diretly to an external SSD via a USB3 hub and a SAT to USB converter. No drop out and no loss of speed. So that is really handy not to save on the laptop. I just plug 250GB external SSDs as if I was using USB sticks.
Still can't focus though. This time I went to Antares, stuck the bath mask and went back to Jupiter. It made me realise too that the focus wasn't out by much at all. So focusing on a star might not be good enough for planetary. Anyway with tonight's seeing the bathinov was the only way to focus anything. Even the thin moon crescent was a washout.
So I did a fair bit tonight and learnt some more.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dennis
Excellent animations Marc, when the seeing peaks, the features really pop. 
I generally focus on a nearby star and then slew to the Moon/Planet to help with best focus.
Now that I am using @Focus3 in The SKy X Pro Camera Add On, rather than the manual method with a Bahtinov Mask, focusing has become an easier task. Not so much the initial focus, but following any focus changes as the night progresses has much improved.
I think @Focus3 uses contrast method so can focus on extended objects, such as the Moon and Planets. here is an excerpt from the doco on the SB Website.
" While you can still quickly focus using a single non-saturated star, you can now also focus on a field of stars (some of which can be saturated), the entire frame, a galaxy, nebula, or even a planet such as Jupiter or Saturn, or the Moon or Sun (with proper filters for solar imaging). You can even focus on terrestrial targets. Because of this, it is now more practical than ever to remain on a target during an imaging sequence and refocus without having to slew off to a focus star; other than the meridian flip, you can now stay on target and refocus in situ as desired."
I'm not sure if NINA's focus routine can do the same, but I think it can also focus on extended objects?
Cheers
Dennis |