Hypercam 2 best settings install#
Hypercam 2 best settings trial#

This type of target can be more suited to higher gain settings, so we nudged gain up to 20 and captured some seven-minute exposures. The best available target for this proved to be the Crescent Nebula, NGC 6888, and we went after it with our 7nm H-alpha filter. We were particularly interested to see how the camera performed on objects requiring special narrowband filters and вЂ“ normally вЂ“ exposures of over 20 minutes. Moving onto globular clusters, we were pleased that the camera achieved sharp captures of the bright cores of clusters like M13 in Hercules, without losing the much fainter outer stars.ДЇor this we used the lowest gain setting.ДЄ test on M3 in the same area revealed that a higher gain and shorter exposures wasnвЂ™t the best option for globular clusters, as some of the central stars blurred into each other. The resulting image showed impressive detail in both the faint outer arms of M81 and within the bright glowing core of M82. Generally speaking, lower gain settings resulted in smoother, cleaner images, but the increased sensitivity of higher gain offered an acceptable compromise on certain targets.

Hypercam 2 best settings trial#

We found it took quite a bit of trial and error at first to settle on the most useful gain setting for each target, although after a few nightsвЂ™ practice it was getting easier. Our first was the popular pairing of M81 and M82 вЂ“ BodeвЂ™s Galaxy and the Cigar Galaxy вЂ“ as these two offered the camera a chance to show what it could do on faint swirling galaxy arms along with bright galactic cores and dust lanes.ДЇor these exposures we selected the 12-bit operating mode, rather than 8-bit, adjusted the gain setting to five, and took a series of exposures, each of five minutes. However, given the low position of the major planets at the time of the test and the apparent reluctance of the Moon to put in an appearance, we opted to test the camera on a variety of much fainter, deep-sky targets. The smaller the ROI chosen, the faster the frame rate and smaller the eventual file size. The mono Hypercam 183M is geared towards deep-sky imaging, although with user-defined Region of Interest (ROI) settings, taking lunar, solar or even planetary pictures is possible, as the camera will also record video files that can be processed and stacked into a final image. Once the cameraвЂ™s selected in the software, the built-in cooling fan turns on and a red LED lights up.

Hypercam 2 best settings install#

Set-up was simple: download and install the driver package and plug in the camera.В We operated it with the AltairCapture software, but itвЂ™s also compatible with the popular SharpCap.