Annotated live views for outreach

[furrysocks2]

Having renewed my interest in astronomy back in November, I've been thinking about what my ideal set up might be. I've built a dob and bought an eq-mounted frac and EPs for visual. I've got a bunch of low-cost imaging experiments going on and a new laptop to play with. I've been learning things here and there but not focusing on anything in particular - performing a breadth-first search, if you like, while acquiring a variety of items which to proceed.

I've got three kids so I'd like to be able to wow them from time to time. I've been involved with the local Cub Pack for the last five years and would like to have something I can readily set up for their enjoyment too. Beyond that, I'd essentially like to reach a point where I can take maximum advantage of the infrequent clear nights, given how little free time I'm going to have over the next decade or two - perhaps not fully robotic, but certainly armchair-capable and adequate enough to do some "science".

 

Trying to do too much at once is never a good thing and so I'm holding off on starting the equatorial platform for the dob or doing much more work on the prime focus newt. So for the ST102/SW150, I've broken it down and here are my first three steps:

• motorise the EQ3
• go-to and tracking
• live view

 

I've got four low-cost cameras:

• LN300 (PAL)
• Runcam Owl Plus (PAL)
• Debayered PS3 Eye (USB 2.0, in progress)
• 5MP microscope camera (USB 2.0, awaiting delivery)

I have just taken delivery of a decent "core i7" laptop running Windows 7 Pro, now well stuffed with astro software. I may dual boot to Debian or run it in a VM.

 

Of course, I can just insert a camera to either scope and point at stuff - I've not actually done that yet but there haven't been the skies and I already know that I'm aiming towards something more... involved. Having just discovered plate solving and seeing the annotated view on the astronomy.net results pages led me to the idea of having an annotated view displayed continuously on a second monitor, likely using the Owl Plus through a binocular objective. There's also the ability to correct for errors in alignment which would be good to have.

The issue of capture from a primary camera and what tool chain(s) I use to display/process is separate. As the first goal I'm working towards is a combination of lunar stacking and live lunar video, I can defer any more thought there for a while. It's really the "second monitor" idea I'm trying to develop. I'm not giving up visual as having a live (dimmed) annotated view I hope would complement that too - as a scope-side aid to help learn the sky, find new things, etc... hence my question about lunar plate solving in another thread.

Having NGC/Messier overlays, planets, asteroids, etc... is a must, both for me personally and for what I'd like to have up for onlookers, whether imaging through the primary or alongside visual. There is of course any planetarium software used to control the mount, but I like having options and I think being able to demonstrate to others that it detects where it's pointing and shows you what's there would be fun. Initially, I'm not that bothered about accurate tracking - happy to manually jog every once in a while if it makes for a quicker setup - a Wii Remote might be one of the options to control the mount anyway.

Over the last few days, I've got a local installation of astrometry.net running and have solved a few fields. Using "plot-constellations", I got the equatorial grid to render locally but there are no coordinates or objects marked yet. I've tried an image with an NGC dead-center but nothing is shown. I expect I will be able to solve the config easily enough with a bit more searching but wondered in the meantime, if anybody had any suggestions or alternatives that might be worth considering, either in tailoring this approach to work for both personal and outreach, or something a little different to try?

I'm just feeling my way and sussing out what might work, trying to cover all the bases in my head (personal, outreach, etc...) and find a direction that satisfies all. I'm interested to hear what folk might think, or experiences from folk who have done similar.

 

Thanks for reading,

Matt.

[furrysocks2]

 

[RobertI]

Hi Matt,

Its clear you have a lot of ideas and plans!  There is a lot covered in this thread and its not totally clear to me what you want, but I can point you in the direction of the video astronomy forum for more thoughts/ideas. For example I use a Lodesatr camera (which I admit isnt cheap, at least new) to create near live views on a laptop via a usb cable. Guiding not necessary and even a goto altazimuth mount is fine for exposures under 30 seconds...ish. Simple and very few demands on the mount. I don't know much about the cameras you mention and people have had really good results with some of the more sensitive webcams, but I went the route of a dedicated super-sensitive astro camera, and I'm very glad I did as its one less thing to worry about, and Starlight Express camera have free live viewing software (Starlight Live) which also makes things very simple. Things that can frustrate for me? Inccurate gotos can be a pain and more likely with small chip webcams, Platesolving is a solution and I have been looking at Celestron Starsense, but am also considering more manual solution utilising an electronc finder. Problems like coma when using very fast f ratios (necessary for real time viewing of faint objects) can be a pain and take some time to get right.  Setup time can be frustrating but I have worked hard to reduce this (keeping it simple seems to be the key) and can now get going in around half an hour from opening the garage to viewing the first image. Anyway not sure if any of this helps, but hope it was of interest. Good luck!

[RobertI]

Ok, read the link and re-read your post and I now see what your thinking of, basically a visual scope with a second scope plus camera attached for live viewing of the same object on a monitor? I think my original comments still apply but I would say that if you want to start live viewing of deep sky objects, then good tracking becomes more important. Typically with my setup I will live stack several images of 30 seconds to get a good view of a typical Messier object, and that's with a very sensitive camera, but the detail far surpasses what you can see through the eyepiece, and you may not be looking for this quality of image. Bright objects like the moon are completely different and much easier to live view. Hope that helps.

[furrysocks2]

Hi, Robert.

Thanks for your replies. Lots of good things in there to have a think about. Accuracy of goto has been mentioned to me before.

 

1 hour ago, RobertI said:

There is a lot covered in this thread and its not totally clear to me what you want ...

No, you're right - it was getting late.

 

I was trying to say that regardless of whether I'm out on my own or with others, and regardless of whether the scope on the mount is being used for visual, lunar/planetary capture, DSO, etc... having a low-resolution "reference view" available either directly on the laptop or perhaps on a second monitor, seems as if it could add value under any of those circumstances. EP or camera in the scope itself is somewhat unimportant and what I'm trying to work out here could be described as a bit of a background task or side show.

It's not so much having a digital view of the same target being observed visually, but more about just showing a bit of context on-screen regardless what is being observed or how - perhaps it's nothing in particular and I'm just aimlessly trawling the sky. Whether it's the name of the objects in the field so that some might remember more readily, showing the names of nearby stars, an aid to starhopping, a pointer towards locating new objects, exposing coordinates and field of view, or whatever can be usefully presented alongside the dots and fuzzy blobs... perhaps what I'm talking about could be described as a digitally augmented finder scope. The options then for EPs, webcam or DSO imaging are independent of all of this. And not just for outreach - for me personally, too. I think this would be a great thing to set up.

If I'm using Stellarium or similar to control the mount, it's all readily available within the same app, but what if it's the dob? I could add digital setting circles and feed back to Stellarium but plate solving as a general approach seems to win over dead reckoning for one dob for example. The interesting bit about the link I posted was being able to both produce annotated plots as well as connecting to Stellarium - connect to PHD as well and it might be the "full house".

 

There are often many ways to achieve the same thing I'm sure and there is certainly lots of free software for which I'm both amazed and grateful. I'm just wondering if, given what I've said above, I'm missing a trick by continuing to pursue astrometry.net in the tool chain and tweaking its config to suit, or if what I'm thinking seems sensible to those who know better than me.

I hope I've made myself a little clearer - anything else in my original post was either trying to give context or simply waffle.

Matt.

 

Edit: perhaps the thread title was a bit misleading - indeed my thoughts were evolving a little as I was typing and I might have changed it had I thought about it. I still think that having more than one screen to look at and seeing that broader context on screen by way of a live, annotated view would be beneficial to some - maybe helping the kids to pair names with things up the sky, for example.

[RobertI]

Ok thanks Matt, I see what you mean now, or at least you have raised me to a higher level of confusion! 

Further thoughts...

The astrometry idea has the advantages of not relying on alignment with the sky in order to work (Ie: you can just randomly scan the sky and astrometry works out where you are and helps to present infirmation about you current target area via stellarium or whatever).  I also guess it is portable from one scope to another, but the down side is you would have to align your astrometry device with your observing device each time so they are pointing the same way - not a trivial task I would think. The alternative for scopes such as dobs is using some form of electronic setting  circles to feed the location back to stellarium of whatever - I dont know if this is possible but surely it must be!?. Down side would be that alignment on the sky is required initially and its not a solution that is portable to another scope. Interesting food for thought, thanks for getting my grey matter going, hope my thoughts were of some use! 

[furrysocks2]

23 minutes ago, RobertI said:

Ok thanks Matt, I see what you mean now, or at least you have raised me to a higher level of confusion! 

Oh, dear... I hope not.

 

23 minutes ago, RobertI said:

The astrometry idea has the advantages of not relying on alignment with the sky in order to work (Ie: you can just randomly scan the sky and astrometry works out where you are and helps to present infirmation about you current target area via stellarium or whatever).  I also guess it is portable from one scope to another, but the down side is you would have to align your astrometry device with your observing device each time so they are pointing the same way - not a trivial task I would think. The alternative for scopes such as dobs is using some form of electronic setting  circles to feed the location back to stellarium of whatever - I dont know if this is possible but surely it must be!?. Down side would be that alignment on the sky is required initially and its not a solution that is portable to another scope.

Yes, precisely my own thoughts, particularly re: reliance on alignment, and portability - thank you.

 

Plate solving also seems like it might have a certain novelty factor to the uninitiated (I mean novel in a good way).