Got my new toy, Neximage CCD

[gary1968]

Ordered my Neximage CCD on Tuesday night from Hinds, got my 10% SGL discount, and it arrived today........

Thanks to D. Hinds for their, as usual, fast and efficient service.

Just have to wait for good skies now....

Clear skies,

Gary

[Jamie]

Good on ya Gary...

Nice one Adam.. 8)

[geppetto]

Congrats on the camera Gary

Have lots of fun with it....

Hope the clouds move away so you can get first light on the moon 8)

[centroid]

I have the little Meade LPI, which is pretty much the same 'beast' as the Next Image, and they are capable of capturing some very good Lunar, and brighter planet (Jupiter, Saturn and Mars) images.

Have fun!!

Dave

[gary1968]

Thanks guys, , looking forward to our old moon coming back so that I can give the camera a try. Hoping to get some daylight lunar images as well. I think that might be a bit more difficult though....what do you think.

Clear skies,

Gary

[geppetto]

Hoping to get some daylight lunar images as well. I think that might be a bit more difficult though....what do you think.

It's no more difficult Gary it's just not possible to get much contrast between the moon and the sky

so you can't see much detail...

However, it's worth doing for practice and also the moon against a blue sky always looks stunning

detail or no.

[gary1968]

Cheers Geppetto, now waiting in anticipation. I'll post images for you guys to see as and when I get them.

Clear skies,

Gary

[Kenny_10_Bellys]

I got the Meade LPI a while back when I had my ETX105, and with it I was finally able to get an astro-image! It was taken out of the window of my house and I had no way to set up the tracking on the scope, so I ended up just using the LPI to take loads of snapshots of the moon which I built into a mosaic of the whole disc...

http://www.axeman3d.com/posts/moon.jpg

Considering it's just a few webcam snapshots taken through a window with no tracking, poor seeing and autostitched togather I think it's pretty good for a first image. Imagine what you'll get on a good night with a motorised scope using stacking instead! Only downside is that these little modified webcams are no good for deep-sky stuff or stars, they're just not up to it. Good luck to you, I cant wait to see the images.

[gary1968]

Wow, K10B....

Thats is a great lunar image! What software did you use to build the mosaic? Thats given me the push to try mosaics as well now....

Gary

[Kenny_10_Bellys]

Wow, K10B....

Thats is a great lunar image! What software did you use to build the mosaic? Thats given me the push to try mosaics as well now....

Gary

I did a quick search on the net and found a program called Autostitch, just stick that in Google and it's the first thing you find. I could not believe how easy it was to use, you just point it at the photos you want stitched and it did the rest in a second or two. To get the image I literally just pointed my scope manually at the moon and snapped away with the LPI taking single images, pointing all over the moon almost randomly. Once I had about 20 or so images I went through them, discarded the bad ones and then manually tried to stitch them together in Photoshop. I swear it looked like Frankensteins face, it was a mess of poorly aligned images with different exposures and looked awful. When I tried Autostitch I pointed it at my pictures, pressed GO and out popped the picture above. It was like an epiphany, all that time wasted to get an awful image and here was this free software that made me look good in a couple of seconds. I'll never fear mosaics again.