Beginners webcam question

[dr_robot]

Hi all,

When attaching the webcam to my skywatcher 127 do I first remove the lens and 90 degree viewing thing? I only seem to be able to get it focused this way but reading around makes me think I might be wrong

[JamesF]

By "the lens" I assume you mean the eyepiece, in which case yes. I don't bother to remove the diagonal and have no problems reaching focus, though it's a fair way from the position where an eyepiece reaches focus. You don't have to leave the diagonal in though. If you reach focus without it that's fine.

James

[Cornelius Varley]

The webcams lens is removed and is replaced with a 1.25" nosepiece adapter. This then goes into the apdapter on the rear of the 127 where the diagonal would normally go. You may need to spend a bit of time trying to get the camera in to focus, maks have wide focus range so you may need to rotate the focus knob a number of turns from its normal postion to get a focused image.

Peter

[Pete Presland]

if you can reach focus with out the diagonal i would definitely leave it out.

[JamesF]

if you can reach focus with out the diagonal i would definitely leave it out.

I'd probably agree, to be honest. I think I tend not to because I'm often working with a barlow and extension and I thing they're a bit more stable when positioned vertically in a diagonal.

James

[dr_robot]

Thanks very much for the tips everybody.

[Space Cowboy]

Make sure the webcam is set to maximum brightness when focusing as the out of focus "doughnut" can be almost invisible.

[JamesF]

That's a good point. When you're way out of focus the image nearly invisible.

At one point I had a spare eyepiece fitted with a parfocal ring so that it would reach focus at the same point as the camera which made life easier until I got the hang of things. A parfocal ring is basically a ring with a lockscrew that fits around the barrel of the eyepiece to allow you to set how far it will slide into the diagonal, thus changing the position at which it reaches focus. These days if I know I'm going to be having a few days imaging I just leave the scope at the focus position for the camera and line the image up using the out-of-focus image with an eyepiece.

James