First quick & dirty web cam experiment.

[Juan from Madrid]

I did my first webcam experiment. A quick, cheap one, to say the least, but interesting anyway.

I disassembled an old Hercules webcam with VGA resolution, removed the illumination leds and added some hot glue to create a level base and protect the electronics, and placed it over the diagonal opening.

Here you can see the results. I estimate that the field of vision I get is about 2/3 of what I get with a 9 mm Plössl eyepiece, I suppose due to the very small sensor size.












The object seen is the red text in the upper left corner of the left skyscraper, that is at a distance of 2400 meters from the telescope.

This has made me interested in implementing a similar system not so dirty and cheap, but cheap anyway.

I've seen some camera alternatives here at SGL: Logitech Quickcam Pro 4000, Creative NX Ultra, Creative Live Ultra, Microsoft LifeCam Cinema...

I'd appreciate some advice.

Besides, I wonder how people adapts these cameras to their telescopes. I guess this information is probably somewhere in SGL, but I appreciate some links.

Best regards.
 

[happy-kat]

All you are missing is a short piece of plastic 25mm plumbing pipe or similar. Fix centrally over your webcam sensor then wrap something over the electronics board to protect it. Drop the plastic pipe bit into your focuser. Sharpcap is an application you can use for capture. Try the Moon.

[vlaiv]

I've done webcam mod once and it kind of worked OK. These are good for planetary / Moon imaging.

Get a cam that is able to give you uncompressed (raw) video at decent frame rate (that is why some cams are more recommended than others).

I think I've modded Logitech C270. It has got fixed lens (no auto focus) so it was easy to remove. I used piece of PVC piping (32mm OD, sanded a bit down to fit 1.25" connection). Just glued it onto cam.

Here is a sample of what can be done with such cam (and 130mm newtonian telescope

[Juan from Madrid]

1 hour ago, happy-kat said:

All you are missing is a short piece of plastic 25mm plumbing pipe or similar. Fix centrally over your webcam sensor then wrap something over the electronics board to protect it. Drop the plastic pipe bit into your focuser. Sharpcap is an application you can use for capture. Try the Moon.

I have been fiddling a bit with SharpCap and it looks promising, thank you!

By the way, it has locked a couple of times, but I don't know if the reason could be the quite old camera driver.
 

[Juan from Madrid]

1 hour ago, vlaiv said:

I've done webcam mod once and it kind of worked OK. These are good for planetary / Moon imaging.

Get a cam that is able to give you uncompressed (raw) video at decent frame rate (that is why some cams are more recommended than others).

I think I've modded Logitech C270. It has got fixed lens (no auto focus) so it was easy to remove. I used piece of PVC piping (32mm OD, sanded a bit down to fit 1.25" connection). Just glued it onto cam.

Here is a sample of what can be done with such cam (and 130mm newtonian telescope

I am impressed by the result!

I assume you have applied a stacking process.  Could for example SharpCap get such an image?

I guess the C270 doesn't provide RAW files, does it?

Amazon sells it quite affordable:

https://www.amazon.es/Logitech-960-001063-C270-HD-Webcam/dp/B01BGBJ8Y0
 

[vlaiv]

10 minutes ago, Juan from Madrid said:

I am impressed by the result!

I assume you have applied a stacking process.  Could for example SharpCap get such an image?

I guess the C270 doesn't provide RAW files, does it?

Amazon sells it quite affordable:

https://www.amazon.es/Logitech-960-001063-C270-HD-Webcam/dp/B01BGBJ8Y0
 

Right, 270C - no RAW, it supports couple of formats, each has lossy compression of some sorts. I think I used YUV2 or something like that for above image.

Yes, image was stacked, and I believe (it was some time ago) that workflow was pretty much the same that I would use now:

1. Capture SER with SharpCap

2. (optional step, you probably won't need to do it initially, calibration only makes sense with true raw sensors) - Pipp for alignment and calibration

3. AutoStakkert! 3 (I probably used version 2 back then) to select frames and stack

4. Registax 6 for healthy dose of wavelet sharpening

 

[Juan from Madrid]

º

6 hours ago, vlaiv said:

Right, 270C - no RAW, it supports couple of formats, each has lossy compression of some sorts. I think I used YUV2 or something like that for above image.

 

Webcams are only useful for planetary images, for wider fields I would need cameras with larger sensors, whether it is DSLR or astrocameras, or alternatively, complete cameras adapted to an eyepiece, right? 

Btw, I've seen here at SGL wonderful pictures taken with smartphones.

I have an old Fuji FinePix S9500 with a 1/1.6" 9.0 megapixel sensor that provides RAW files, which I'm tempted to try to remove its lens...

[vlaiv]

Problem with all cameras that I've found when tying to adopt them for long exposure is removing the lens (apart from SLRs and mirrorless that have exchangeable lens).

There is electronics that talks to lens when camera is powered up and if lens fails - camera will refuse operation.