Jupiter - 12/03/14 - Attempting to use Xbox Webcam

[Killie]

I wasn't going to post these pictures as I am still no where near getting the best out of my setup. However, as was said, without showing them I am not going to get any obvious help.

This is my 2nd time at using my Xbox Webcam to image Jupiter and to be honest I am not sure if I have actually regressed a bit :-)

Anyway, I took a few 2 minute Avi at 8 fps (I actually set sharpcap to 10fps but for some reason it was only running at 8fps)

The first was using my 2x Barlow and as always when I use my barlow I just can't seem to get any real detail. I think I am struggling with the focus on my Mak to be honest.

The 2nd was without the barlow. I think I may have over processed this one a bit or missed out on something to bring out the colour better.

I can show my earlier images if needed but this is what I am getting so far. I actually though I was doing okay with the webcam until I saw someone else post images way better with the same equipment as me!!

[JamesF]

Focus is always the big struggle.  Getting that right improves the quality of the image enormously.  Unfortunately there's not much for it but practice.

Equally, some nights the sky just isn't good enough to give you good quality images.  You can't focus well if the state of the atmosphere just won't support it.  It does seem to have been the case over the last few months that the atmosphere has rarely been steady even when the sky is clear.

These are the best I ever managed to do with my 127 Mak and Xbox camera (probably a 2.5x barlow and an extension as well).  I didn't work hard at using the Xbox cam as I already had an SPC900, but it should give you some idea of what can be achieved and to be honest if someone stuck at it I'd expect better than this.

Bear in mind also that the quality of the barlow really counts.  The stock one I had was awful.  Other people have said theirs are better.  They seem to be variable.  The Revelation 2.5x barlow is still less than £40 I believe, and good quality for the money.  I actually bought one and then removed the lenses from my stock barlow and put the empty tube in the back of the Relevation to get a bit more image scale on top.

James

[WaveSoarer]

I've been using the xbox webcam for some planetary imaging also. Here is my effort from the night of 11-3-14. The sharpcap settings I used were:

Frame Divisor=1
Resolution=640x480
Frame Rate (fps)=15.00
Colour Space / Compression=YUY2
Exposure=-7
Brightness=128
Contrast=32
Hue=0
Saturation=53
Sharpness=0
Gamma=180
WhiteBalance=3447(Auto)
BacklightCompensation=0
Gain=31

The avi file had ~2000 images in it. I processed in Registax with wavelets and drizzle (at 0.5) hence the number of pixels is more than supported by the camera. I'm not convinced that drizzle really helped but it was worth a try. I used a 3x Barlow on my 200p so Jupiter may have occupied a larger fraction of the sensor. Focusing is quite tricky but, with the settings I had, the moons were visible and I tweaked the focus knob until they were as sharp as I could get them. A bit of patience is needed as I found that the image vibrates a lot during the tweak and I needed to release the knob, let things settle, check the live image and then tweak again. I stopped when I thought the moons were as sharp as I could get them - kind of midway between the two extremes of what I thought was just out of focus either side of ideal. In the processing I used manual alignment points at various points on the disk of Jupiter and one point on each of the moons. At the end I used wavelets to bring out the detail but trying to avoid things looking over processed. I also adjusted the brightness and contrast.

I thnk that the SPC900 camera that James has is superior to the xbox camera but they are very difficult to get now and they are quite expensive. With some care the xbox camera does a reasonable job - though my efforts don't match up with the rather lovely images that James can achieve.

[WaveSoarer]

This is the version without drizzle for comparison.