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M57 with a PS3 Eye webcam


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Much better than my first two efforts but still a long way to go:

zx30as.jpg

30 minute avi of 10 second exposure frames taken in sharpcap. Split into frames in Virtualdub and stacked in DSS with 14 dark frames. Taken with PS3 Eye on a Skywatcher 130p mounted on an EQ5 with an RA motor. The only processing I've used is in DSS, I've tried GIMP but I'm still getting to grips with it.

Any feedback very welcome, this is what the stacked image looks like before processing:

osz8t1.jpg

I wouldn't have thought this is usual so any thoughts on that would be great too. Unfortunately these images are in JPeg format I can't seem too find a free image hoster that works with TIFF or PNG.

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Very good; I'm new to all this so please forgive me if I'm asking a silly question, but I'm intrigued to know how you used the PS3 camera? i.e., where exactly does the PS3 camera go. I've got one loafing around somewhere & it never occurred to me before to use it for imaging. 

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Hi Mike, you modify it much like other webcams, by screwing a 1.25" adapter into the M12 lens holder. It's a bit more of a faff ith the PS3 Eye as the lens is often glued into the M12 lens holder so you have to unscrew the M12 holder and put in a new one. I hope that makes sense. I'll message some links to you early next week when I get the chance. There is a driver you need to run it on a PC as well.

https://codelaboratories.com/products/eye/driver/

the driver can be buggy and crash occasionaly.

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If you use another free capture package like Firecapture, can you go longer than 10 seconds?

The noise doesn't look bad on the final image to me, though i'm only looking on my phone. Are you using darks of the same exposure settings, and using the hot pixel detection and removal in DSS?

James

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If you use another free capture package like Firecapture, can you go longer than 10 seconds?

The noise doesn't look bad on the final image to me, though i'm only looking on my phone. Are you using darks of the same exposure settings, and using the hot pixel detection and removal in DSS?

James

I've tried Firecapture and although it seems more stable, I can only use the higher frame rates. Theres no long exposure, gain, or color control for the PS3 Eye using this software. I'm pretty sure 10 seconds is the longest exposure allowed by the hardware. The Darks are taken after the lights on the same gain, exposure and colour settings. The Automatic detection of hot pixels setting is only for monochrome images as far as I know unless you mean the setting under the cosmetics tab. I'm trying various settings, as we speak lol.

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Very good; I'm new to all this so please forgive me if I'm asking a silly question, but I'm intrigued to know how you used the PS3 camera? i.e., where exactly does the PS3 camera go. I've got one loafing around somewhere & it never occurred to me before to use it for imaging. 

Big advantage of the PS3 camera is they can be cheap - ebay etc, lots of web pages for modifying & hacking them.

Here's a start  http://astropetros.com/wp/?p=206   and    http://astropetros.com/wp/?p=227  

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I suspect if you wanted to do bias frames with a webcam, put lens cap on (like dark frames), set exposure time to the shortest time possible, and just snap a video, the take the video apart and make individual frames. Try a google search for "bias frames webcam" as there must be something on this.

James

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Those were the links I was going to send but I didn't have them bookmarked. I would add that when you're capturering framerate equals exposure when using the PS3 eye. For example 0.100 fps is a 10 seconds exposure, 0.250fps is 4 seconds etc. Once you've got your avi you can use virtualdub to spilt it into png image files that you can load into Deepspacestacker.

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I suspect if you wanted to do bias frames with a webcam, put lens cap on (like dark frames), set exposure time to the shortest time possible, and just snap a video, the take the video apart and make individual frames. Try a google search for "bias frames webcam" as there must be something on this.

James

The Eye works a bit differently than LX webcams though so I'm a bit baffled. To get an exposure of 10secs I need to set the framerate to 0.100fps and have the exposure bar at max. When doing a bias the exposure bar would have to be at minimum I presume but what would I do about the framerate?

Thanks for the kind comments eveyrbody by the way.

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  • 6 months later...

Have been doing planetary and visual for a while, and I've unfortunately not had much chance to image DSO's that will comfortably fit on the sensor due to time of night, trees houses etc. But I did some more processing in gimp for the pic in the first post and because I'm quite happy with the improvement I'm posting it. Hoping to get more DSO's with this cam once I get my Astroeq fitted!

t561j8.jpg

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