Gina's DIY All Sky Camera - Mark3 - with QHY5L-II-C

[Gina]

Thanks Huw   Yes, living room lights - must remember to draw the curtains better   I've got one or two snaps taken later with the room lights off which I'll post shortly.

[Gina]

Here's a snap taken very close to maximum darkness at 01:02:15 astronomical midnight is at 01:03 BST here.  The remaining sunlight can be seen in the north - top of image.  Exposure of 20s, gain 50% and gamma 0.7 with dark frame subtraction, captured in TIFF format, transferred to Win 7 desktop and processed in Photoshop to crop sides and apply curves to enhance the image.  Saved in PNG format for upload.  No shapening or noise reduction applied in Photoshop.

[Gina]

Just watched videos.  Apart from watching the movement of stars and particularly the Milky way, the remaining light from the sun moving round the top of the image before lightening the whole image was quite interesting   Also nice to see the colours of some of the stars in the stills

[Dave_D]

polaris looks so low down...

[Gina]

Guess I'm several degrees south of you Dave

Watching the TV local news this evening it seems the pink glow to the north last night was the Aurora Borealis   Didn't think to get out of bed and go outside - mind you I have to go right out to the yard to be able to see to the north.  Have to see what tonight brings - cloud probably!

[happy-kat]

Absolutely I looked at this thread thinking you must have cgot the aurora and you have.

[Horwig]

Yes, that pink glow makes sense now. I didn't know about it till tonight either, drat.

H

[happy-kat]

the email alerts from spaceweather . com are useful prod to them do more local research on predicted strength.

[Gina]

It's almost clear again tonight but no Aurora.  I'm annoyed at not eye-balling last night's display    Guess it's nice to have it on camera though.  Moon hasn't set yet.

[Gina]

TIFF file capture, cropped in Ps and saved in PNG format for upload.

[happy-kat]

Hope you have clear skies and get lucky catching the meteors.

[ChrisLX200]

A sophisticated AllSky cam you made there Gina!  I tried with a colour QHY5L-II but found it a lot less sensitive that the mono so swapped it for QHY5L-IIM, now I only need 3 sec exposures to get down to around mag6. I've had a difficult time finding a decent quality lens too, I've got a drawer full of lenses of dubious parentage. I was really looking for one about 2.1mm focal length (150deg field of view) but the one I have is worthless. I do have a half-decent 1.8mm lens (giving 180deg view) but with a my partially obstructed horizon it's a bit of a waste of pixels.

ChrisH

[Dave_D]

what's that strange brightness running top to bottom about 1/3 from the left? is it a camera defect? there's nothing in the sky that looks like that up here in Manchester...

[Gina]

If you mean in post #102, that's the Milky Way.  The pink glow in the north (top) is the Aurora Borealis.

It's pretty clear tonight and I have the camera all set up with 20s exposures capturing an AVI video.  No sign of the Perseids yet though.

[ChrisLX200]

It's a bit quiet tonight and I've not seen many myself yet. 

I've lost touch with what 3D printer you're using now Gina, I'm currently looking at the new Wanhao 4S do you know anything about that model?

ChrisH

[Dave_D]

If you mean in post #102, that's the Milky Way.

Must be my subtle northern sense of humour

[Gina]

It's a bit quiet tonight and I've not seen many myself yet. 

I've lost touch with what 3D printer you're using now Gina, I'm currently looking at the new Wanhao 4S do you know anything about that model?

ChrisH

I ran video recording overnight but didn't catch anything.  Some cloud passing over earlier on but clear later.  Hoping to try again tonight.

The UP! Plus 2 gets the most use.  But I have my Experimental printer working and produced some prints with it.  I'm currently working on my Large printer with 300mm cube printing volume.  I'm afraid I know nothing about the Wanhao 4S.

[Gina]

Given my all sky camera a clean-up.  Replaced the acrylic dome with a new one as the old one had a scratch or two and some marks I couldn't get rid of.  Also some light escaped through the green outer casing from the LED on the Arduino Nano and caused some light pollution, so I've sprayed the inside of the casing with black direct-to-plastic paint.  I'm hoping that will have cured the problem.  I'm now ready for tonight, hoping to capture Perseids

I seem to have a problem with the dome thermometer but I'll leave it for today - I know the heater works well enough.  There are a couple of other things I want to do so I'll sort it out then.  I want to add an LDR to detect day/night and set the aperture accordingly (as I did with an earlier version).  This isn't sufficient to cater for the vast luminance change between night and day, and the capture software needs to change the exposure as well.  I mainly use 20s at night and around 100μs in daylight - sometimes down to 20μs, which is the shortest camera exposure.

ATM I'm using EZCapture (Windows) software which covers this exposure range and has dark frame subtraction for long nighttime exposures but I'll take another look at oaCapture as James has added some updates since I last tried it.

[Gina]

Total cloud cover ATM   Could clear later of course but the forecast is clear for 2200 then cloud from midnight followed by heavy rain for the rest of the night

[JamesF]

Yes, it's not stunning here tonight either

James

[Gina]

Another capture after taking the darks stack.   No stars let alone Perseids

[Gina]

Almost clear sky now.  But having started video capture EZPlanetary has bombed out - GRRR   Now it'll need another ten minutes to capture the darks stack as it doesn't store it   EZP has a fair few bugs!

[Gina]

Cloud coming in again now   Started the AVI recording and EZP crashed   That's twice it's done it tonight!!  I need software that will run the QHY5L-II-C with 20s exposure, dark frame subtraction and capture video without crashing.  I don't mind too much if I need software for daytime and different software for nighttime but I need stuff the actually WORKS and works reliably!

[ChrisLX200]

I use FireCapture for this (a QHY5L-II colour and also mono). Never crashes on me anyway.

ChrisH

[Gina]