Jump to content

Banner.jpg.b83b14cd4142fe10848741bb2a14c66b.jpg

WADAS (Wakefield and District Astronomical Society)

stonemonkeylives

Recommended Posts

Soupy

Soupy

Posted
Posted

Very good evening at the first school. Kids seemed to enjoy it. Thanks to Vicky, Martin and James for coming along to help. It was much appreciated by myself, the classroom teacher and the head teacher. Shame it was cloudy and raining but maybe another night. The head teacher told me they were doing a camping event in Gomersal in April and we would be welcome to come up for a few hours with some scopes if the skies were clear to show the kids. Might be another possible outreach event we could do. All good for any community chest applications we put in

Link to comment
Share on other sites
  • Replies 12.2k
  • Created
  • Last Reply
hazegood

hazegood

Posted
Posted

Hi All, finally back on line a month after my house move, just thought I would post to let you know I am still around, have a couple of questions to ask mainly about laptops and webcams for astro use butthey can wait until the weekend when I have more time
 

Leigh

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Soupy

Soupy

Posted
Posted

Thanks Sam.

Welcome back Leigh feel free to fire any questions, I am sure we have the collective know how to help out in any way we can.

I saw the sky last night on the way home after a few sherbets at the pub, so was in no state to get scope out but I did some bino viewing with my mate, Jupiter, M42 and M45 he was amazed!

Link to comment
Share on other sites
hazegood

hazegood

Posted
Posted

Thanks for the welcome back Paul, right the questions, during the house move I discovered an old laptop I forgot I had, its a Dell D430, Also found and old Logitech quickcam, am wondering if I remove the lens from the  cam and somehow attach a 1.25 inch piece of tube to it (seen a you tube vid showing how to do this) would the two together be any good for very basic astro photography, as in planet and bright objects, with my celestron 130

Advice as always appreciated

Leigh

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
stonemonkeylives

stonemonkeylives

Posted
  • Author
Posted

If you can get the focal point right it should work with the moon and brighter planets. I know that with my skywatcher 130P I would need to move the primary mirror to hit the focal point. But it's definitely worth a play about.

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

Link to comment
Share on other sites
hazegood

hazegood

Posted
Posted

should have also asked what software do I need on the lap top to do this any recommendations, its running win 7, but I may through that out for some version of Linux if that proves to be better, only has 2gb ram, and that all it can take, but would be only using it for the capture then process the images on my desktop

Link to comment
Share on other sites
hazegood

hazegood

Posted
Posted

thanks for the advice guys, so far I downloaded sharp cap, got that woking with the unmodded cam, then set about modding the cam, which basically involved removing the lens, I also disconnected the capture button on top of the case, reassembled it,
then spent hours looking for a small piece of plastic 1.25'' pipe to attach to camera housing to fit into the focuser, then it dawned onme that my eyepiece kit has a T-adapter in it, so have for now gaffer taped that to the cam, have done a daylight test on a distant object and can achieve something close to focus,but I do still have collimation issues which I need to get sorted out.

only thing I cant find in sharpcap is how to set an exposure time, but maybe its not showing if the cam does not support that.

looking good so far otherwise though

Leigh

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
nicks90

nicks90

Posted
Posted

sharpcap just does the recording of the video, it doesnt do long exposure (as such), but it will allow you to alter some settings such as gain, recording format, resolution etc to get the best set of videos you can.

you then use a programme like registax to take each individual frame of that avi and stack them on top of each other. Registax then checks each frame, aligns them, checks various things like histogram etc and you can set what % of frames to stack - eg best 50% - and then it gives you a final image. Its still a bit rough, but then you can use wavelets and all sorts of other foreign and alien things to play with the image to get the best result. or phtoshop, gimp etc instead.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
hazegood

hazegood

Posted
Posted

had a play about last night during a rare clear sky for an hour, had a nice clear view of Jupiter two moons in the eyepiece, lovely sight, so swapped eyepiece for webcam nothing just a black screen, switched back to eyepiece and still had the view, so Iam either doing something wrong, or the chip in the webcame is not sensitive enough

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Sammyb

Sammyb

Posted
Posted

Have a play with the the settings. I think those webcams are used by a lot of people so should be ok. Also it can take a bit of practice to get the planet on the chip. May have been just off the screen or something. Start with no Barlow. Also it'll be right out of focus when you first switch to the camera so just look for a lighter area which will be the out of focus planet.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
nicks90

nicks90

Posted
Posted

As Sammy said, amazing how hard it is to get in the centre of fov. I worked out my webcam in my 130mm newt was the same as a 5mm ep with a 40deg field of view - proper tight.

Also had the same issue as you, saw nothing on the screen to start with as if its out of focus it just disappeared.

Turn the gain bar right up high, try and get Jupiter in the field of view and swap in the webcam very quickly. Rack the focuser right in fully and then work it outward whilst keeping and eye on the screen. Hopefully it'll pop up as a horribly over exposed grainy white blob. Now you have it in the centre, keep tracking it and whilst doing that, reduce the gain until it is fairly dim on the screen. (You're stacking lots of frames so it doesn't need to be bright, having it too bright will result in a rubbish stack)

Once its dimly on screen, try and get it in focus best you can and then record a minute of avi. Play it back and see if its focused right and repeat until you have decent focus, then start recording 2 or 3 minute avi's until you are bored. Then go in and start stacking them in registax/autostakker.

Focusing, you may get lucky and with gain turned right up, you may pick up a star or Jupiter's moons. If so then use that to focus, easier with a point source than a planet.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
nicks90

nicks90

Posted
Posted

Here you go, just found my avi's I took last time I tried it before getting my big dob. Grabbed a single frame off each avi to give an idea what it will look like on screen in sharp cap. Can't find the stacked final result though, must be on my harddrive somewhere.....

Edited to add, I might have another go with the webcam in the 12" tracking dob. But to be honest its all rather a lot of FAFF! Especially when the results are a bit hmmmmm. Maybe if you have a decent camera........

post-26554-0-59935500-1391455237.jpeg

post-26554-0-89632600-1391455250.jpeg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Go to topic listing

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue. By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.