Testing frame rates. PIPP too.

[Baz Pearce]

Hi Gang,

Lots of discussion about the Philips SPC900 webcam frame rates lately. So i thought it was time i got to testing. I grabbed a few captures of Jupiter on Saturday night after a long time taken over focus. Seeing wasn't great, but it was very clear. I was using the Astromaster130 with Astro Engineering 2X APO barlow. Wasn't very happy with the colour i was getting, but the detail was the most important factor here.

All these were 2400 frame captures, Centering in PIPP then using Registax5 to sort the best 1500. Captured over about 12 minutes.

10 fps:- 30fps:- 60fps:-

Clearly, a huge difference in quality all-round at 10fps over the other 2.

Using the 10fps capture in PIPP, i tried the quality estimation feature for the 1st time. I set it save the best 1500. Then using the weighting option to get the higher quality frames duplicated. I've added the Registax5 sort again for easy comparison.

Registax5:- Best 1500:- Best860 weighted:-

Looking at the 3. The weighted image looks the best for detail, but the Registax5 version is more pleasing to my eye at least. If i do some more work on the colour, that could change my mind.

Today a small gap in the clouds came over for me to get some Solar data. Capturing at 5,10,15,20,25,30 and 60fps. Capturing 1000 frames each over a 14 minute period. Had the 70mm Skywatcher refractor setup, so i used that rather than lose the clear sky. While i had clear sky the seeing was better than average.

5fps:- 10fps:- 15fps:- 20fps:- 25fps:- 30fps:- 60fps:-

I can see the degradation begin to kick in at 15fps. 20fps was a bit hazy, and a bit of cloud messed with 25fps. But i don't think they'd have improved much if they were clearer.

I want to get some Lunar captures tonight between the clouds. Some more work on Jupiter too if i can.

Baz.

[JamesF]

I kind of knew this would be the result from reading the source code for the driver, but I'd never actually settled down to demonstrate it visually so good on you for doing that. The results are quite clear and well worth the effort of putting together.

James