My First webcam saturn capture.

[spacetrace]

This image was taken back in May but I never got around to posting it on here. It was taken prime focus through my SW150 using a modified xbox webcam. The file was captured using sharpcap and stacked in registax 6, i think it is a stack of approx 400 frames. I did have an attempt previous to this but it was far from fruitfull!

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[Kokatha man]

Hi Tracey - that's not a bad effort at all.....I hope you don't mind but I had a little "play" with your image and discovered 2 nearby moons which could really be any combination, although on the 1st May Dione & Tethys were in that configuration during the night.....but over May other combo's could've had that alignment: a lot of new imagers think you need 2 sets of exposures to bring out planet's moons but that isn't the case.....it's a matter of isolating the moons and adjusting their levels seperately from the planet.

I left your name in (well, it's your image!) but I did an rgb align to show you that the channels were a bit out, which you can appreciate by the colour shifts in your name.....

All in all a you have made a very good job of this planet..!

[Sam]

That looks pretty good Tracey, the Cassini division is visible which always quite positive.

[EdF_uk]

Hi Tracey. Very well done, looks brilliant. What scope and mount do you have?

Ed

[RogerTheDodger]

Nice image

[hayju01]

Nice image Tracey, have you tried Jupiter yet? I'm sure you could do this great planet some justice with you skills.

[spacetrace]

Oooohhh thanks for the comments and the advice. I like that you have made adjustments to the image, it shows that 1) I still have lots to learn and 2) what more I can do to improve the image further. As for scope, I used a 150pl mounted onto heq5. One question I do have, is it better to image with a lower fps setting?

[Kokatha man]

Oooohhh thanks for the comments and the advice. I like that you have made adjustments to the image, it shows that 1) I still have lots to learn and 2) what more I can do to improve the image further. As for scope, I used a 150pl mounted onto heq5. One question I do have, is it better to image with a lower fps setting?

Hi again Tracey - I don't have any experience of the xbox webcam but there is a general rule going around that most webcams work best at the lowest framerates (usually 5fps or 10fps.)

This popular bit of advice is related to the fact that most of these webcams are usb1 devices.....ie, they use the old usb1 cables and connections that don't allow for very fast transmission of data from the webcam to the computer - and using higher framerates means higher data transfer.....resulting in what is termed "compression artefacts" in images when the higher framerates are selected in capture.

This is a pity because often the faster framerates help get better images in lesser seeing conditions, and of course if you can capture more frames in a given time (3 minutes for Jupiter) then you have more frames to work with, to weed out the poorer ones and still have a decent number to stack for your final image!

The good news is that quite a few people have found with the Phillips Toucam you can get better results by going above that "supposed limit" of 10 fps.....my Toucam is on "permanent loan" to a friend who uses higher fps with good results and both he and others attest to the benefits therein - there's a thread over on Cloudy Nights on that topic which is probably on the 2nd or 3rd page by now of the Planetary Imaging section.....so go for it and the most important piece of advice I can give you is to experiment with different settings of framerates.....if all the other settings are standardised and you vary the framerates on a night when you're out imaging and the conditions are quite good, it'll give you the best insight into what your own webcam likes..!

[Ewok]

Hi Tracey, what a cracker.

I have an xbox web cam, just wondering have you modded it at all or is this just from a standard cam ?

[Space Cowboy]

Very nice image. Definitely has the Xbox factor!

[spacetrace]

Thanks again for further advice, I planned on testing each setting to get a good idea on how to get the best results! As for the xbox cam mod, all I did was pull it apart and remove the lens in the camera, leaving the chip exposed, I then simply put it back together, to obtain the capture I focussed onto Saturn with eyepiece, simply took out the eyepiece and placed webcam into the focused, I did have to move the camera to get the right point. Once I had Saturn centered a small adjustment is needed to get the focus right then it was a case of adjusting the settings and capturing the frames. If you do use the xbox cam it is recognised straight away by windows and is also recognised in sharpcap that iused for capture.

[smt1988]

good one nice image !

[Space Oddity6]

Very nice image! Keep them coming.