New to Astrophotography? Why aren't you plate solving???

[@bluelemon1394]

Amazing video Mark! Its amazing to see how far you've come!

[@marksastrojourney]

Thanks for the encouragement!

[@diogenes505]

Thanks for this video. I have just started to use Sharpcap for EAA. You explained that I need to change the exposure time for plate solving 20-30 seconds versus whatever I will use for live stacking.

[@marksastrojourney]

I'm glad you found something helpful in the video! Clear skies!

[@moonraft24]

I am also a beginner in astrophotography and I tottaly agree with you. I had my light bulb moment in May last year and since then I am using platesolving. Thank you for this video. I am also using the same gear. Cheers

[@marksastrojourney]

Great to hear about your similar experience! Clear skies!

[@PeterK6502]

To enhance your view of the object, you can employ the "Auto Stretch" feature within the "Display Histogram Stretch" control in Sharpcap. With this option, most objects become visible even with brief exposures.

[@marksastrojourney]

Thanks for sharing Peter! There’s always yet another useful feature to be aware of. Clear skies!

[@adventuresofshadowdog]

Very helpful video. Thank You!

[@marksastrojourney]

Glad it was helpful!

[@KJRitch]

Thank you. I purchased an ASIAir Plus and this introduced me to plate solving. It was one of the reasons I purchased the product. However I’ve been having issues with its plate solving. I have a C8 SCT with and AVX mount. Like you did I’m starting out with a planetary camera, ASI585MC, to dabble in DSO. I find in native focal length, 2032mm, and the ASI585MC the ASIAir plate solving fails. Maybe the field of view is too small or my camera sensor is too small. It’s 11.2mm x 6.3mm, 3840x2160 resolution and 2.9 pixel size. It isn’t until I install my 6.3 focal reducer does ASIAir plate solving work. I noticed in your video that every time you plate solve SharpCap will also sync to mount. I’m not sure ASIAir does that. When you choose and object in ASIAir it will slew to a target and if you did everything right in the setup, it will plate solve and center. If it fails it will try several times automatically. But sometimes it just gets lost. Maybe the field of view is still a little small for some section of sky. I don’t have a Windows PC, just a 2015 MacBook Pro but I’m testing a trial of Parallels 19 with Windows 11 Home to try out some of the Windows only programs. Using Stellarium with SharpCap and All Sky Plate Solver and PHD2 looks like a good setup without going to the complications of NINA. I’m a beginner too but I’m far behind you. You’ve given me something to think about for a plan B solution. Have you tried to plate solve on a planet like Jupiter? Were you able to get it centered?

[@marksastrojourney]

Hi KJ, it's interesting to hear about your experiences with ASIAir! Regarding planets, I usually don't plate solve on planets but I have done it a few times just to see what would happen. It worked for me, but only once I bumped up the exposure time from what I usually have it set for a planet. In my case, I usually need to set exposure time to somewhere between 15-30 seconds for plate solving to work well. When the exposure time is shorter, there are not enough stars captured for plate solving to work very well. When I'm targeting planets, I usually have exposure time set to 1 second or fractions of a second. This is because if I want to image a planet with my camera, I'm typically capturing AVI video format. The other reason I usually don't plate solve on a planet is as follows: I also don't usually enable PHD2 Guiding on a planet. The reason is that the AVI captures is usually only 1-2 minutes. That depending upon your field of view/region of interest selection can create a fairly large AVI file (many gigabytes). In addition, the planet usually doesn't move/drift out of my field of view in such a short period of time. Also, when processing an AVI file, I usually use something like PIPP to pre-process the frames to align/center them and choose the higher quality frames, which produces an output AVI file with the frames better aligned (even if the planet drifted a little). In addition, the stacking software will align the individual sub frames. Regarding synch-to-mount, it's definitely helpful because each time you do it the alignment of your mount is being improved for that session. I've not ever owned an ASIAir, so I'm unfamiliar with how it handles synching after plate solving. It might be worth researching a little more online. Clear skies!

[@anata5127]

Double plate solving for correct adjustment tells that you need star alignment for 5-10 stars, solve backlash problem of mount and use Sharpcap for PA.

[@marksastrojourney]

Thanks for the suggestions. As I mentioned in the video, I hadn’t done any star alignment. Of course, if you do multi star alignment your mount is going to probably be almost spot on and plate solving would make very minor adjustments. Where I live, it is often very challenging to do multi star alignment as I have trees on all sides. Inevitably, the hand controller alignment routine will choose more than 1 Star that is not visible due to horizon obstacles. Maybe someday I will live in a more favorable location.

[@anata5127]

@@marksastrojourney Yeh, abstractions are problems for many backyard astro. I have them as well. But, I have to align to at least 25 objects to use my mount. So, I drew horizon in Stelarium and align to stars of 5-8th magnitude. Well, there is no way around. I do this, or my mount will be useless.

[@marksastrojourney]

Wow! It's unfortunate you have to go through that every time you setup (guessing you don't have a mini observatory where you can leave your mount setup). This is what I've found with my GEM28 mount: if I do a 1 star alignment (something like Arcturus or Vega), after that I can just use plate solving and everything works just fine. I don't waste the time anymore on multi star alignment for this reason. I guess every mount is different. I took panoramic photos of my typical setup spot and have been working on removing the Blue Sky color from the combined image. I'm hoping to soon get that setup in Stellarium so I can have a better gauge for which targets are actually visible from my vantage point.

[@anata5127]

@@marksastrojourney My Mount doesn’t need guiding. Alignment for 25-150 stars is required. It is done by a software. I do manually 25 stars in 15 min. Observatory will be helpful, but alignments (once a week) will still be needed, since tracking accuracy is 0.05” drift per minute of tracking.

[@marksastrojourney]

Sounds good! I'm sure your mount is a higher quality precision instrument than I'm used to working with.

[@dannyhull8007]

I'm not plate solving because I'm using a C8 and a Canon F-1 with ISO 1600 film. Any suggestions on where I might find helpful information on this type of astrophotography?

[@marksastrojourney]

Hi Danny, I’m guessing your camera can produce a JPEG or FITS file. If so, All Sky Plate Solver is a stand-alone application and can work directly with image files via its User Interface. I also saw some threads talking about ASCOM drivers for some DSO cameras - it might be worth investigating. Thanks for watching!

[@celestromel]

How did we survive without plate solving?

[@marksastrojourney]

I have no idea Mel! When I started out I was unaware of the capability and was very frustrated trying to locate deep sky targets. You can image how much of a game changer it was when someone left a comment that I should try it out. Clear skies!

[@jesuschrist2284]

Sorry for the dumb question but using platesolving in nina i dont need star alignments? Dont see it as an option in nina

[@marksastrojourney]

You could still do a 1, 2 or 3 star alignment routine with your mount if you feel it improves your overall guiding/accuracy. Within the settings of NINA, you can tell it where your plate solving software is installed and it will use that software for plate solving. When that plate solving occurs, it's comparing the image captured to a database that contains the locations of stars, etc. in the sky to align your mount to the target.

[@davidletz9123]

"New to Astrophotography? Why aren't you plate solving???" Since I am new to astrophotography, I don't even know what plate solving is... 😉

[@marksastrojourney]

I totally understand! I too was in the same spot at one time. But after starting to use it, a person realizes it is a great tool! Clear skies!