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Can anybody on here knowledgable about thermal imaging help me?


JokubasJar

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1 hour ago, JokubasJar said:

What's stopping me from using a thermal camera to do some planetary imaging? I figure I could just buy a thermal cam, rip the lens off and use it with my telescope? Something makes me think its not that easy.

Lol because all you would see if you attached a thermal imaging camera or even sensor to the back of your scope is the temperature of your objective lens. Optical glass in telescopes is not transparent in mid wave IR. You would need a germanium lens or something. Even at that point the earth's atmosphere is warmer than the surface of Jupiter so would just would not see it IR telescopes are placed in space for a reason. 

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22 minutes ago, Adam J said:

Lol because all you would see if you attached a thermal imaging camera or even sensor to the back of your scope is the temperature of your objective lens. Optical glass in telescopes is not transparent in mid wave IR. You would need a germanium lens or something. Even at that point the earth's atmosphere is warmer than the surface of Jupiter so would just would not see it IR telescopes are placed in space for a reason. 

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/850197-thermal-infrared-imaging-of-the-moon/ I found this guy who seems to have done it with the moon, albeit at quite a low resolution, it seems to be possible. I have a reflector not a refractor so I think it is a possibility. The model he used has a 206x156 sensor at less than 9 fps, and I found another model by the same company with a 320x240 sensor at more that 15 fps so I figure that might make it better. You said that optical glass isn't transparent in mid wave ir, so I assume a barlow or adc wouldn't work right?

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7 hours ago, JokubasJar said:

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/850197-thermal-infrared-imaging-of-the-moon/ I found this guy who seems to have done it with the moon, albeit at quite a low resolution, it seems to be possible. I have a reflector not a refractor so I think it is a possibility. The model he used has a 206x156 sensor at less than 9 fps, and I found another model by the same company with a 320x240 sensor at more that 15 fps so I figure that might make it better. You said that optical glass isn't transparent in mid wave ir, so I assume a barlow or adc wouldn't work right?

Advanced Driver Assist Systems | Teledyne FLIR

This is a image of a car in mid wave IR. As you can see the person on the right is bright (hot) but the person driving the car is not visible through the windscreen. That is because mid wave IR will not go through glass. 

The windscreen is black because its reflecting the IR from the sky at 45 degrees into the camera and so appears as the same temperature as the sky which you seen in the background. 

I am unsure what is going on with the link above. A reflector would be the best bet maybe? But Aluminium coatings are not ideal, hence why the web is coated in gold. 

If you really want to do this then get Newtonian and see if someone will re-coat both mirrors  in gold for you. Would not be very much gold so maybe not that much more expensive than normal mirror re-coating? 

Adam

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