FireCapture Tracking Issues

[SeeMeade]

With a whopping 2 nights under my belt with both FireCapture and a planetary camera (ZWO ASI 290MM, hooked up to a C8), I'm reaching out for help with a few issues I'm having. Feeling that learning curve and the club beginners night just got cancelled due weather :(

(1) Setting a smaller ROI just makes the target plant disappear, even when it was centre image in a larger frame?

(2) Sometimes I see the 4 red dots (from Auto Align?) track across the screen, and soon after they go off screen, it's like an invisible black box follows it and covers the planet. Some kind of tracking error or an issue with a Cut Out box? Does Auto Align or allowing the cut out box to track the planet override the scope/mount's own tracking? Two pics attached as the red dots track up and to the left, and the black curtain starts to scroll over the planet...

(2) Screen sometimes splits into 2 or 3 (see attached photo of an overexposed Mars). I'm using a brand new gaming laptop so wouldn't expect a hardware issue?

Grateful for advice & suggestions.

[LostInSp_ce]

Hi Colin,
Welcome to the forums. The first thing you want to check is how good of a polar alignment you have. You need to be aligned really well at long focal lengths otherwise it's going to drift out of the frame very quickly. If your polar alignment is very good then make sure that you also check the 'center in ROI' option as well as the auto align option. Then you have one of two options to keep the planet in frame. Either make micro nudges every few minutes or so or the better option is to guide on the planet just as you do with stars and it will stay locked the whole night or until you slew to a different target.

[SeeMeade]

Isn't a "polar" alignment only needed for equatorial mounts? I just have an alt-az. I was struggling previously with the manual 3 star alignment until I got the Bintel tip to swap to a high power EP to nail the centering. The C8 came with StarSense Autoalign, which yielded an odd result the one time I tried it last week so I'll look to calibrate the next clear night we have.

By "Centre in ROI" option do you mean click the "Centre ROI" icon in the toolbar? It doesn't have any functionality to it - no menus or other settings open up?

[multiweb]

You need to click on that icon (see attached) to recenter the planet in the ROI.


The auto align feature stabilizes the planet in the viewport only but it's a display thing. It doesn't guide the mount so the planet stays centered. If you have a drift and the planet goes out of the sensor over time it will disappear. You can do manual corrections to keep it centered.

Not sure about the screen split.

[sunslayr]

If you want the mount to keep the planet centred rotate the camera untill when you press the cardinal directions NSEW the planet moves straight up and down, left and right. Then you can enable the auto guide feature in firecapture, you may have to reverse the directions in the settings if the planet is upside down. If you have auto align enabled you should see 4 red lines that indicate where in the roi the planet is located so even if auto align is enabled you can make sure its not getting cut off. For best results make sure the planet is in the centre of frame before enabling auto guide.

Also I think the screen getting split up is a software or driver quirk I had it happen to me once after selecting many different resolutions for the camera, I think it got confused and started displaying the wrong lines.

[SeeMeade]

Thanks for the suggestions all - looks like some great tips in there. Unfortunately Sydney continues to be socked in and forecast to remain so for some days yet - damn La Nina - but eager to try them out once the skies clear.

[SeeMeade]

My local astro club beginner night has been cancelled twice due weather and waiting for it to be rescheduled. In meantime, I'm struggling on. Five questions follow. Thanks for your time.

1) Split screen issues continue. See images attached, sometimes horizontal, sometimes vertical, sometimes both at once and colour is either grey or black.

2) I've tried using the button to centre the planet in the ROI, but it just makes the planet disappear?

3) Is there a way to adjust the slew rate when using the cardinal buttons (which I've just found after watching a Dylan O'Donnell video) to adjust tracking in FireCapture?

4) If AutoGuiding works in FireCapture do I have to align the scope first? Tree-limited available sky from my yard limits me to a small overhead arc, which can be ok for planetary, but not for alignment, so I have been travelling to an observing sight which is getting to be a pain with travel time, setup, packup etc, especially when the capture isn't working...

5) I've just tried my first imaging with a x2 TV Barlow and x2.5 Powermate. The image of Saturn with the PM was very dark - I ran out of upper adjustment range on the gain & exposure and it was still too dark. I had to fudge it by selecting a smaller darker planet from the drop down settings, to give me a wider range, but that then will stuff up the file storage and naming conventions....
But the crux of the question is whether the light passing through the additional lenses in a PM will dim it significantly? Less of an issue in barlow (less lenses?)

Heading to some dark skies inland tomorrow and hoping for a more successful imaging session.

[Merlin66]

Colin,
The perceived light loss is not related in any way to the number of optics in either the barlow or Powermate.
It's related directly to the magnification.
at x2 you're spreading the original light over x4 the original area., so you perceive it as 1/4 as bright.
Such is life....small bright planet or bigger darker planet.


Never tried the guiding in FC so can't comment.


The loss of frames could be due to the selected frame rate, USB traffic settings time taken to save images to your drive.....


With the ROI I use the mouse to "click and drag" to make a large enough ROI to cover my area of interest.
Can you take a screen shot of your settings (at the Left hand side of the FC screen...)

[LostInSp_ce]

Sorry Colin some imagers prefer EQ mounts for imaging so I just assumed you were one of them. I'm not sure about guiding with evolution mounts so I won't comment there. It's hard to say what's happening over a forum but my advice would be to get your pointing accuracy and tracking as good as possible. Then create your ROI, centre the object within it and use the auto align feature to help keep it centred for as long as possible. After that just keep an eye on any drift and make whatever micro nudges (slews movements) that needed to keep the target centred in your designated ROI.

[SeeMeade]

Thanks all for suggestions. Still having issues but will seek in-person help from the club (which features some Bintel staff) to try and resolve. Cheers.