Mummut OSC

[alan potts]

Firstly, thanks to all that showed what I really believe was genuine concern and those who tried to offer advice..

I managed a brief but poor seeing 40mins. Yes it works. The mount was miles out the seeing was horrible and I had a massive spider about 10 inches from my left ear.

I most certainly would not win any prizes for to-nights exposures but it gives me something to build on. I don't think to get the best from this is a 5 minute job, there is a lot to understand and fine tune, I can only say I feel that throwing time at it is the only way to improve. I started with Saturn and even on that it only needed a fraction of a second on the APM 115mm F7 and it was over-exposed, at this point I was happy, not with the shot but the fact that it worked.

I think it will be some time before you see any shots shown on here, I have my standards and they are not as low at to-nights efforts, there is room for improvement.

Clear skies all of you,

Alan

[shirva]

HI Alan. ..been at that junction nothing going right the more you try the worse it gets and find your first results were best....I'm with you on the point about showing your work as I haven't shown any either as I too don't think there good enough ...

Because the quality of images on sgl forums are of such a high standard and like you I want to only show the bestI can produce. Davy

[johnno]

happy you got it sorted Alan, well your heading in the right direction, what was the problem?. john

[DoctorD]

Hi Alan

Glad to hear that you finally got it working - bit worried about the BS support though.

Clear skies

Paul

[alan potts]

Shiva, Paul and John,

Yes the standard is high on here and I can live with that, I won a fair bit years ago for camera work. I used to photograph concerts, Iron Maiden, Saxon, Yes, that sort of thing. I had a large exhibition in a local gallery. The thing was it wasn't me that was showing it, my brother had loaned hundreds of my shots to a friend that was a photographer, and the cheaky wotsit used my work.

The problem with the unit, well there was not a problem, it was just I was trying to shoot in the day and I guess didn't have the right speed or focus. I sent 3 e-mails to Brigthstar and never received a reply, though Bernard was good.

I am good mind to put up the results just so people can see that everyone has to start somewhere, and a good place to start is with the guys here.

I do have one question, the files are FIT files, is there anything else that can show them or can you change them to Jpegs. I was trying RAW which I understand but it seem only Black and White?

Alan

[sloz1664]

If you have photoshop you can import Fits files using fits liberator. The good news it's a free download.

cheers

Steve

[alan potts]

I have PS CS 5 on the desk top but it is a big program for anything but the fastest laptops I still have a disk of PS 7 so that is a little easier to handle. I will give it a try.

Anything on the RAW files as to why they appear B&W?

Alan.

[DoctorD]

Hi Alan

If you fancy a challenge you can can try Iris to display the FITs files, - very powerful bu more like linux command line than windows (it's a windows program but has a very "special" user interface.

Here is a list of FITs viewers suggested by NASA for viewing Hubble images they release:

http://fits.gsfc.nasa.gov/fits_viewer.html

I've just tried MicroObservatory Image 2.0 - Windows, Linux 7 OSx versions, all free.

Seems to to the job - just remember to adjust the levels - Process->Adjust Image, click Auto.

Can save the file as a GIF.

Hope this helps.

Paul

[DoctorD]

Hi Alan

I like the idea of the camera being too sensitive

I guess that without an kind of AUTO exposure, you really have to start with very short exposures and increase the exposure until you see something. If the focus is way out you might never see anything

Clear skies - looking forward to some images from this camera.

Paul

[alan potts]

I think I will lean this program first, it is not the sort of thing that comes easy to me.

It was interesing beacuse from the senitive point of view it only took a few seconds to completely over cook Saturn but I could see Titan and that is at about Mag 8.4, it seems to be able to get down to that level very fast indeed. I think I will try it on something that gives a wider FOV.

Alan.

[DoctorD]

Hi Alan

You might also want to have a look at Deep Sky Stacker Live - basically point it at the folder where you are capturing files and it will align and stack as they come in, displaying the results on screen - works with FITS as wel as BMP and JPEG files.

From reading various reviews, the Mammut is not best suited to planetary imaging due to it's interlaced shutter - better on targets that need several seconds if not longer.

HTH

Paul

[alan potts]

Paul,

I knew from someone else on the forum that in this case Saturn was not the best thing on earth to start with but it was something bright and with the clouds dotted about was just there.

I have Stacker on the laptop. I want something that 's not to heavy as I am using my old works computer which is now 13 years old. It was a top model then at 2,000 quid and is a Dell from when they were good. It worked fine. I have a new Sony and a fairly new Asus with very good specs, but outside I rather use the Dell while it still has life.

I dropped an APO a few weeks back I don't want a laptop doing the same thing. The APO is still fine a plastic Laptop I am sure would not like concrete.

Alan.

[nytecam]

Sorry to hear Alan you're having problems with your Mummut OSC CCD cam. I have a SX Lodestar-C OSC cam so can't really help but from experience it's usually cam/ laptop/ software incompatability eg OS [XP/Win7 etc] or software settings. Until these are ok no pic will be seen ! Keep plugging away with maker