Philips spc900nc webcam help

[TCF]

Hi all, new member here and  also new to astrophotography, and needed  some advice, I am trying to get my spc900 to image through my Celestron Nexstar 6SE without any luck, the camera is fine with it's own lense in but when I add the adapter to fit into the telescope I don't get an image, any thoughts would be appreciated

[jambouk]

Can you see an image through the webcam when just pointing the webcam at something in the distance, not theough the telescope?

If so, it's a combination of focus and gain/exposure settings.

The focus you need for the web cam will be VERY different from an eye piece. Practice in the day light. If the focus is off when you have the webcam in you won't see anything. You will need to work put how many turns in whixh direction to go between eye piece and webcam.

Gain - wazz this right up initially and when you can see the object bring it back down (never image with the gain too high)

Exposure - again increase the exposure time to something like 100ms so you capture lots of light initially, then ease off on it if you can.

Sensor size (a third aspect i forgot to mention) - the web cam will be similar to a 6mm eye piece, so if your subject is not in the centre of the field of view, it won't hit the sensor and you won't see it. Add a 2x powermate and the sensor will act like a 3mm eye piece!!!! This is why i use a flip mirror to help me get the target bang in the centre.

Good luck.

James

P.s. Focus will be the main problem here. Try and play in day light or on he moon tonight.

[astromerlin]

The Moon is a good target for first time webcam setup, Place a 20mm eyepiece in the OTA and align to the moon, get the moon central in the ep and then swap to the webcam. Rack the focuser all the way in and adjust the gain on the webcam to 60-70% and adjust the shutter speed so the screen image is not too bright then move the focuser back to obtain a focused image. On my 250P OTA the focused point is about 10mm from fully in, some scopes have difficulty in getting to focus with webcams, if this is the case with yours and you need more "inward focus" then try placing a barlow in which will move the focus point back.

Edit, Oh, Welcome to SGL.

ATB

[Bizibilder]

You say the camera is fine with its own lens?  Have you removed this lens in order to fit the webcam to your scope? if not then you will need to do so - you can buy adapters that fit the SPC900 in place of its lens. (sorry if you are already doing that!).  You can try your set-up in daylight by trying to focus on a distant object.  That will get you near enough so you can focus properly at night.  With my own scope I have felt tip pen marks on the focusser to show the correct focus position for various set-ups.  It saves a huge amount of time,

[JamesF]

Getting it working during the day is definitely a good way to start, particularly for getting somewhere close to the focus point (which will almost certainly be quite different from that for eyepieces).  If the scope is too far out of focus the light from a target such as a planet is spread out too much to create any kind of image.  It may help when focusing with the camera to turn the gain and brightness up to maximum and set the exposure to the longest possible so you stand the best chance of seeing an out-of-focus image.  Reset them once you've found the target.

Don't underestimate how accurate you have to be with the image placement if you're attempting to image a planet, either.  The SPC900 sensor is very small and you really need the positioning of the image to be very close to the centre of the field of view.  I found life much easier when I started to use a reticle eyepiece to get the image perfectly centred before swapping to the camera (you don't need the image focused for this as long as you can see where it is).

James

[CSM]

I have this setup and it works very well.   But it took me a while to work out the best way.

What you need to do is to first centre the object, Moon or Jupiter at this time of year, using the lowest power eyepiece.  For the Moon it should be easy to centre it as it will take up most of the view. If you now have your computer on get your capture software up on the screen.  I use WxAstrocapture, it's free and works really well with this webcam. Now take out the eyepiece and put in the webcam, select the camera - I use the 2nd option - and you may see something on the screen.  If not first go to the Exposure settings and try adjusting the brightness - down if more than half-full Moon - also set the shutter speed to 1/100 sec and 10 fps.  Then adjust the focus using only VERY small adjustments - I never remember which way to turn and just experiment! With luck you should get something on the screen sufficient to capture a few hundred frames or more.  Worth setting it to black and white as well.

Jupiter is trickier but you should start off in the same way with the low power eyepiece and centre.  The,n if you have a more powerful eyepiece and better still a reticulated eyepiece - I use a 12.5mm - put that in and centre that.   Now take the eyepiece out and connect to the camera as above.  This time you need settings of about 1/25 sec and 10 fps and the colour setting.  Depending on the viewing you may need to up the Saturation but generally leave the Gamma low or even zero.  Again you need to adjust the focus very gently and don't try to capture more than 1800 frames - if it manages to stay on the screen for that long!

If you manage all of this you can increase the magnification with a 2x Barlow.  Low power eyepiece and centre, barlow + eyepiece and centre, barlow plus high power eyepiece and centre, camera and adjust focus and other settings.

If is absolutely crucial that you properly centre the planet before you put in the camera otherwise you won't see anything.  Even being a bit off centre will result in nothing on the screen.

The other problem that you will have do get used to is direction of movement of the planet on the screen.  The right arrow will move it left, the left arrow right, the up arrow down and down arrow up.  And set the rate to 4 otherwise it will just zoom out of view and you will have to start all over again.

If you need more help and advice see my web site or send me an email.

[Steve Ward]

Welcome to the forum sir ....  

Nothing much to say that hasn't been covered above apart from ..... 

 " And set the rate to 4 otherwise it will just zoom out of view and you will have to start all over again "

I would suggest setting the rate to "1" not "4" .....   

[jambouk]

To add to what Steve just said (and i totally agree about setting the slewing speed to 1, or 0) once you have centred your object on the sensor and is in the middle of the display on the computer, teach the handset that is where the object is (press escape once, then press and hold escape again for a second or two and the name of the object will flash for a second or two, once it's stopped flashing press enter); then if you do lose the object, there is a fighting chance you'll be able to find it again.

James

[Steve Ward]

And make sure your finderscope is Perfectly aligned ... 

[jambouk]

This time i semi-disagree with steve.... If you've lost a planet off the sensor, you are still unlikely to be able to centre it again on the sensor by using the finderscope, unless steve knows a very neat trick that i don't. It's like hunting for a needle in a haystack, even if you know you can only be half a degree away in one direction or another. It would be handy if the handset had a sweep routine which did concentric circles around a point and could be stopped easily. I think if you've lost the planet (not the moon, that is easier to find as you just keep slewing following the light and the finder scope is useful for the moon), and you can't find it within 30 seconds of slewing around, go back to an eye piece and re-centre that way, then back to your webcam. This is why i find a flip mirror so useful but imm using a mak and i've got a lot of focus travel.

James

[TCF]

Guys thanks very much for all the advice, will have a good read and try what you have suggested. will let you know how I get on.

Cheers

TCF

[Sandancer10]

Hi and welcome.

I had a problem with the same webcam and it was easy to fix. I use Webcap 2 and one of the guys at the local Astro club told me to make sure one of the settings was on YUY2, it's on the first page, right hand side. Hope this helps.

[Steve Ward]

This time i semi-disagree with steve.... If you've lost a planet off the sensor, you are still unlikely to be able to centre it again on the sensor by using the finderscope, unless steve knows a very neat trick that i don't. It's like hunting for a needle in a haystack, even if you know you can only be half a degree away in one direction or another. It would be handy if the handset had a sweep routine which did concentric circles around a point and could be stopped easily. I think if you've lost the planet (not the moon, that is easier to find as you just keep slewing following the light and the finder scope is useful for the moon), and you can't find it within 30 seconds of slewing around, go back to an eye piece and re-centre that way, then back to your webcam. This is why i find a flip mirror so useful but imm using a mak and i've got a lot of focus travel.

James

I've never had a problem getting back on sensor provided the finderscope is bang on , I generally nail focus first using a very bright star and Bahtinov mask , checking the finder alignment afterwards and then with the 'Exposure' and 'Gain' right up in Sharpcap I slew back to the target .

I then put target in centre of reticle and monitor the laptop screen as I get close , generally the object appears on screen as it should , just be careful not to touch the finderscope in the process as they're so easy to knock slightly off .

[glowingturnip]

a trick I use is that you can super-impose a reticle on the image in Sharpcap - so once you have the image centered bang-on using the reticle at your lowest power in Sharp cap, then you can start adding barlows and refocus and hopefully it's still centred.

[jambouk]

OK. I just find once a planet has left the sensor using the 180 Mak, it's gone for good. Using a faster scope would make it much easier. I've never found my finder scope (9x50) helps in that situation, largely as the planet still appears so big in the finger scope it difficult to know exactly when it's under the cross hairs.

James

[Steve Ward]

Sounds like you need to tweak the PA , the target shouldn't be wandering off-chip .... 

[jambouk]

I know my PAs aren't anywhere near perfect; it doesn't generally wander off the chip too quickly, but when I was playing with Uranus the other night with a 2x Powermate on too, it was wandering towards the end of the field of view every 5-10 minutes or so, but I'd narrowed the imaging area to something like 340x480 on the ASI ZWO 120MC, so I felt I was doing OK.

The thought of a permanent set up and a drift aligned mount-OTA combo continually teases me

James

[Steve Ward]

Provided you align the camera so that the drift is E-W or N-S and not diagonally at all you should just be able to slew back at very low speed and return to centre , if not drifting in only one direction it's a real pain.

Can you not mark a semi-perm position for the feet , I've done the "three holes in the patio" trick and the mount goes back in exactly the same place each time.

Did the drift-align using this method with the Mak180Pro atop the HEQ5Pro , ended up with a couple of minutes unguided .... http://www.cloudynights.com/item.php?item_id=2838

[jambouk]

Steve, i've got a confession, i never thought about rotating the camera so the drift was in just one direction which would be easy to correct with just one of the direction keys!!!! Doh! No wonder i could never find it again. Thanks for this.

I leave the mount out at home all the time, and just bring the scope indoors, but there is always a but of movement of the mount for whatever reason so the PA is always slightly off initially; i blame it on a badger, but it's probably me knocking things as i unload and load the scope.

I'm still toying with the idea of a small roll of roof obsy with a pier.

I've tried one drift align process and it was easy and successful; i just don't do anything at present which needs better PA, though i'd like to try.

James

[Steve Ward]

How about some simple brackets screwed to the legs and fixed down to prevent 'badger-bump' ... 

[jambouk]

I want an obsy, stop thinking of ways to avoid having one

Jd

[kmca92]

Hi guys about to receive one of these cameras however it doesn't come with an IR filter , I plan to image the moon , Jupiter and possibly Uranus in the near future. Should this be an issue ?

[JamesF]

Hi guys about to receive one of these cameras however it doesn't come with an IR filter , I plan to image the moon , Jupiter and possibly Uranus in the near future. Should this be an issue ?

It's not the end of the world.  I'd say it's a good idea to have one, but you can live without it.  You may find your images are a little over-exposed in the red and have to correct them accordingly.  Having a filter of some sort in place also helps to keep dust off the sensor.  It can be a pig to get the sensors really clean.

James

[CSM]

Jambouk - I think the slewing speed will depend on the scope and possibly the handset.  4 works for my Celestron NexStar 6SE with a focal length of 10.  For other scopes such as yours then 1 may well be better.

Good point about the angle of the camera.  I'd never realised that it had any effect on how you viewed the planet on the screen either until someone told me about it.

[jambouk]

Every day's a school day in astronomy

Every other day is usually cloudy

Jd