Webcam advice for novice

[Westfy65]

Hi,

I haven't done any astro-imaging before but thought I would have a go with my 4 inch Celestron refractor.  I've converted a Logitech Webcam Pro 4000, thanks Freebz1985 for your help, and had a go capturing images of Jupiter last Sunday night.  Things didn't go according to plan so I would appreciate any advice forum members could offer me!

 

I used Sharpcap2 and Registax 6.

 

I don't have a RA motor drive so spent most of the time adjusting the 'scope to keep the image centralised on screen.  As a result I didn't have enough time to adjust the settings on Sharpcap2 to any real extent and consequently didn't get any detail - the image of Jupiter was white with a blue halo around it.  I guess this means it was overexposed?  Interestingly, when I changed compression formats I momentarily got some details, eg bands, before the image got washed out again.  Is this simply because I need to tweak the settings of Sharpcap?

 

Also, am I basically wasting my time without a RA drive anyway, even if I can sort the settings out?  If not are there any standard settings I could start with to get some half decent images together, which I can the fine tune when the image is centre of screen?

 

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[knobby]

Make sure that the settings are not on auto as a starting point. Tty setting gain at about 50% and exposure / shutter speed to about 0.06 second . Also drop the max frames per second to 10, any more and the data gets compressed a bit like a poor jpeg.

[Westfy65]

Hi Knobby,

Thanks.  I read another post after I had submitted this and thought it may be the fact that the settings were on auto.  I will give this a try the next time I can - won't be any time soon looking at the current forecast!  Do you think I can get some goods vids without a RA motor drive?

Cheers

[knobby]

You might be able to track manually

[CSM]

You probably don't need to centralise the image on the screen.  Have your software ready to use, position the image near the edge of the screen so that it will drift across and press the Capture button.  That way you may get enough frames and may be able to get away without a RA motor, but the latter is a much better idea.

[Langy]

I'm in the same position without the RA drive, but I would guess that even if you have to manually track every few seconds you should still be able to get enough material recorded. From what I can tell the various stacking software options should pickup on the object moving and re-frame them to use when stacking. Therefore even if you over adjust the tracking and lose it on a few frames the software should still deal with it.

I know that when I use my 10mm EP which is roughly 0.5 deg coverage that Jupiter will still go across the EP over a minute or so which would mean that if your recording device can see a similar coverage you may well find that you don't need to adjust all the time trying to track the object.

[Westfy65]

Thanks for the feedback everyone.  With regards to your observations Nebula that is what intend to try for the next webcam session I carry out.  If I can get the settings pretty sorted manually before I start recording then hopefully I can capture enough decent quality images whilst Jupiter is on screen.