photography/webcam advice

[nebulanebula]

Hi 

I have a Celestron AstroMaster 130 and I am now looking to get a camera/webcam for some imaging. 

What I am wondering is, where do i start?! my brain is boggled by all the info out there but I am wondering for anyone with a similar scope or if someone could put it into plain english what I should be looking for. 

Also, i have a mac so from reading some reviews on Amazon of various pieces of equipment some drivers are not compatible with macs - so does anyone know of a camera that is compatible and will see me through beginner - intermediate imaging? 

Price range is £100 or under. 

Thanks! 

[ronin]

What imaging?

Webcams are suited to planetary, you take a movie as an .avi file then process this movie file.

If effect you simply get a webcam that will work on your Mac, and as you have the Mac you re in the best position tio know what webcam will work on it.

After that it is processing software - like Registax - to process the movie from the webcam. If Registax has a Mac version then really that is it, at least for the basics. Otherwise throw  post in the Software section asking about a Registax equilvalent for a Mac.

If the idea is for long exposure DSO images then a webcam is not applicable and for that you need something that can do exposures of 60 to 120 seconds and preferably longer. However the mount needs to be a fairly stable equitorial and it needs to have motors drives. The cameras for this are generally DSLR's (although fairly heavy), then comes ones like the ZWO cmos devices (but over £100). I have ignored the ones like Atik and Imaging Source etc - simply they cost way over £100.

Planetary is the easiest, just be aware that we will lose the planets for quite a few months. So you may not have anything to go and image.

[mballak]

I use Parallels to run Win 7 on my mac.  My macbook is about 8 years old.  I've upgraded the ram but it works like a charm.  I run BYE, Registax, Deep Star Stacker with no problem.  

[hazegood]

Have the same scope, on a SW AZ GOTO mount works ok for planetary with a modified xbox live cam (plenty about that on these forums)  don't know if it will work with a mac though,
 

Bought a canon 100d (out of your price range at around £200 if you can find one as discontinued now) but still a great camera., it wont reach focus on the scope not enough inward travel on the focuser,

I am not sure if its the same for all DSLRs on that scope though

Leigh

 

[RichM63]

The usual suspect if it will work on a Mac, SCP900NC for planetary imaging, will be less than £100.

But for software IDK however, get past the eye watering set up (actually don't, and read more) check out the 'software' link for a pretty decent set of links.

Primorial-light

[JamesF]

I'm fairly sure that neither the Xbox camera or the SPC900 are supported natively on OSX.  oaCapture doesn't support them yet, though I was planning to add support for UVC cameras that produce a video stream (such as the Xbox cam and Lifecams) at some point.  Writing a user-space driver for the SPC900 from the ground up is something I'm not sure i can face just yet.  If it were needed for Linux as well then I might, but the SPC900 works fine on Linux with the kernel driver.

James

[JamesF]

Actually, the cheapest planetary camera that I'm fairly sure should work on a Mac (with oaCapture) is this one:

http://www.365astronomy.com/zwo-asi034mc-colour-14-cmos-usb20-camera-p-3700.html

James