Focusing Your Camera - Celestron NightScape 95555 Brochure & Specs

once nightscape is attached to your telescope and powered on, you are ready
to use AstroFX software to control the camera and begin taking images.

foCusiNg your Camera

Before you begin taking images, it is important to take time to carefully focus the cam-
era. to focus nightscape from AstroFX's snAP screen (see Fig 6):
1. set the Exposure duration to a short interval (e.g., 1 second to start). You want
the star to appear bright enough to effectively focus, but not so bright that pixels are
saturated. remember, the longer the exposure duration, the longer it takes to see
the result of a change in focal position.
2. set the Resolution to Half or Quarter to reduce download time.
note: resolution of Half (or 2x2 binning) will combine two adjacent pixels to
effectively increasing the pixel size by four times. likewise Quarter
resolution increases the pixel size by 16 times. while this will increase light
sensitivity it will also reduce the resolution of the image. so "binning" is a good
method for focusing, because image acquisition speeds up greatly and gives
you greater sensitivity to see faint out-of-focus stars. Binning can also be used to
increase light sensitivity when imaging at long focal lengths such as f/10. Go to
the nightscape web page on the celestron web site for more information on
focal length and binning for celestron telescopes.
3. set the Exposure type to Focus and press the Start Imaging button.
4. now center a moderately bright star in the frame and slowly adjust focus until it
is visibly sharp in the downloaded image. Hit Abort once the star is centered.
5. set Subframe to Set with Mouse and use the cursor to draw a box around the star.
6. Press the Start Imaging button again.
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