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Focus Feature


88fxstd

Question

I had the trial version of BYE on my pc and recently purchased the premium version. During the trial version I could see stars in the Frame/Focus center and also in the zoom window. I was using the HWFM option and it worked great. Now I do not see any stars at all when I click on Frame and Focus. My camera is installed on the ED102CF. I can take photos and see stars in Imaging mode but not in Frame and Focus. Do you have an idea what I may be doing wrong? Thanks in advance.

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LiveView is used by Frame and Focus. It uses very short exposures and only the brightest stars will be seen. In order to see them, you have to use the maximum sensitivity setting. If you still can't see any stars, you will have to use Snap images on the Frame and Focus screen to get visible stars. Since you are on the Frame and Focus screen you can still use FWHM or HFD to measure the stars for focusing.

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One of the main Focusing Tricks with an Imaging Camera on a Scope:

  1. Set your Camera and Focuser to a Rough-Focus position (learned from previous use - some use a Marker on their Focuser Drawtube to mark the starting position)
  2. Balance your Mount and Scope
  3. Polar Align and Star Align 
  4. Slew to a BRIGHT Star in the same quadrant of sky as your Target
  5. Focus on the Bright Star - using Frame & Focus or Snap Images or Bahtinov Mask or other preferred method.  Lock Focuser
  6. Slew to your Target
  7. Get your Autoguiding Calibrated and ready to go
  8. Use Frame and Focus (now more effective since well focused) to make Final Positioning tweaks
  9. Start your Imaging
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If you can't see anything despite being sure you have a bright star in the field of view it is probably because you are way, way out of focus and the light from the star is so wide spread that it does not register on the live view frame, which is only a few millisecond so anything faint need to be fairly close to focus to start with.

One way to see if you have something in the FOV what I do at times is take a 5 to 10 seconds still image an see how close to focus I'm really at.  The loop features helps with this approach too.

Keep us posted,

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Thanks everyone for the quick responses. I ended up doing 10 second exposures and saw I was slightly out of focus. After about 6 exposures I was able to achieve the smallest stars. The next time I try to use the focus option I will select the brightest star (i.e. Sirius) and use it. Thanks for all your help. Clear skies! 

 

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