Getting Started with Raspberry Pi Onboard

[RaspberryJamBerlin]

Hey peeps I wanted to ask some question about the Raspberry Pi and Astrophotography... For those that don't know in a nutshell Raspberry Pi is a single board computer that is the size of a credit card (some models are smaller) and essentially are tiny diy computers. They also have Cameras that you can connect and essentially convert your Raspberry Pi into its own configurable camera, attached that to a telescope: astrophotography inbound.

I'll layout what I got and what I want to achieve in some short points

Gear:

• Raspberry Pi - Picamera HQ 12MP Camera with detachable lenses (Rolling Shutter)
• Celestron AstroMaster LT 76AZ (D=76mm F=700mm f/9) Model #31036
• 3d Printed converter that allows me to attached the sensor to the telescope instead of the eyepiece

Location:

• Berlin Germany but at the outskirts to getting out of the city is a short hop and a skip

Goals:

• I'll be honest I am totally new to astronomy and the telescope is my sons so I am not entirely sure what to expect
• I would like to try and photograph the night sky - Star field pictures
• Photograph the moon and any other stellar bodies the gear allows
• Finally it's not about getting stunning pictures but rather getting the best out of what I have and having fun doing it.

I know what I have is not the best but I need to figure out if there is anything I can do to improve the quality in the images and use the telescope to its potential (which I have no clue how good it can perform)

Attached is a picture - an example of what the Raspberry Pi can take using the Celestron (taking photos of the moon) its about 12 shots stitched together using photoshop image merge (nothing fancy) 

[StevieDvd]

The weak point in the setup would be the onboard camera and possibly the software on the Rpi running it.

These little computers are widely used in astro but either running Astroberry, Stellarmate or encased in a ZWO Asiair Pro/Plus.

 

[happy-kat]

Hi

Nice to see you got a Moon mosaic from your first go. Another approach is, as the atmosphere is not always steady for the Moon, videos can be used and then software picks the best images and will create an image from that, and you could repeat that for each panel to make up your mosaic. Do you have video ability with your camera, a quick search suggest it does, this would increase the chance for more resolved images. Focus is also key, to help know you have the best focus you could make a homemade Lord Y mask out of cardboard then focus on a bright star then swing to the Moon. If you are processing the output images then here is a list of software that might be used I've assumed windows:

Moon or planetary Registax,  autostackkert 

deep sky stacking DSS, SIRIL

general - GIMP

With a static mount this keeps exposure length short but you may find some star clusters/globular cluster might work, you would need to stack lots of very short exposures of possibly 1 or 2 second duration (down to personal tolerance of star trailing distortion), the final stacked image you'd crop the edge rotation stacking artefacts off then tweak what was left. Have fun experimenting not forgetting have a go at Jupiter.

[AstroMuni]

17 hours ago, RaspberryJamBerlin said:

Attached is a picture - an example of what the Raspberry Pi can take using the Celestron (taking photos of the moon) its about 12 shots stitched together using photoshop image merge (nothing fancy) 

Thats a great image. Others have provided the choices available to you. I use the RPI to do all my imaging but with an astro camera. My scope is the bigger brother of yours, an Astromaster 130 and you can see my journey in my signature link.

[rnobleeddy]

I got this kit to try to do the same, but haven't ever got around to setting it up.

The pi camera probably isn't ideal, but I don't think it'll be a massive limitation for shots of the moon.

My suggestions:

- if you're using the lens with the pi, don't - if it's possible to setup with the scope focusing directly on the camera, do so

- take videos and learn to stack images like you were using an astro camera

 

[RaspberryJamBerlin]

Thanks for the responses peeps, 

Noted on the video front and I am interested in how stacking works... 

In terms of the lenses I take off the C-mount lens and essentially smoosh the camera into the eye piece hole just without the eye piece itself... That I am wondering is if I did have some sort of glass and lens between the telescope and camera could I get a better picture (I am thinking iPhone pressed on the eye piece kinda thing

[happy-kat]

From what you've described I think it's still worth doing videos as then you get hundreds more images per frame from which software stacks the best frames to make the final image then you sharpen it using wavelets.