|
What focus method do you use for planetary imaging?
As far as I can see, there are three options;
1) slew to a star and run a V-curve autofocus routine then slew back to the object. For me that would mean getting pin-point accurate gotos setup, and making a Voyager Profile that is just for focusing a planetary camera (I don't think Sharp-cap or Firecap have autofocus routines? Helper tools, yes, but I've never found them to be that useful. Maybe I'm missing something?).
2) Bahtinov Mask. Again, this would work best on a star, as planets are a disc.
3) Just eyeball it. With seeing going in and out, I find this method really difficult to gauge because you're comparing flashes of good seeing with another moment that happened a few seconds ago. Was the previous flash more in focus than the one just gone? Who knows?
What would be best would be some kind of in-situ tool. I've just downloaded Firecap's FC edge plugin. Maybe that'll work better. I see sharpcap has some tools including fourier detail detection, and edge contrast detection. Maybe I should switch?
What are your experiences? I'm curious how others approach this problem.
Cheers Markus
|