Trying to photograph the moon, and failing...

[Paul.fr]

Hi there. My question could actually belong in a number of section, I hope this is the correct one.

My daughter is a budding astronomer and now that she has taken a prolonged interest in astronomy, can name stars and all constellations, I decided it was about time she had a telescope that was not a toy. So I bought her a Sky Watcher Capricorn 70x900 telescope.

This is fine for our initial and immediate use in star, planet and moon spotting so we wanted to move on to taking photos of the moon to start with. I bought a Phillips SPC 890 ( or is it 880?) webcam and had it flashed to 900, bought a screw in attachment so it will fit on the telescope and with it hooked up to the laptop away we went.

The trouble is we can't seem to get a full disc image of the moon. We don't have any lenses or barlows in the scope just the webcam, but it seems to be zoomed in and we just get a massive image of a quarter of the moon. No full disc or even a nearby star or two.

What we doing something wrong?

Can anyone point us in the right direction?

Many thanks to anyone who reads this, and anyone who replies.

[sir bert]

try a plane flatner this will reduce your focel length

and give a smaller image

im not shure but you may need an adapter

this will cost monie i think i payed $60.00 canada dollars

and that was yoused

[rowan46]

this designed to work with the celestron neximage so it should work with yours just screw it into the nosepiece then attatch to your scope Celestron NexImage Reducer Lens

by the way welcome to sgl

[msinclairinork]

Welcome to the forum!

Basicaly it just depends on what scope you pop the webcam into, to which field of view you will get...in your case with the long focal legnth it is giving you this result. Hence others have sudgested a focal reducer which will widen the field of view.

Hope that helps.

Michael

[Ransu]

Hello Paul

I think it is not possible to catch full disc image of Moon with combination of webcam and 900mm focal lenght. Even using focal reducer is not enough. Webcam is using guite small chip, thats why you get big magnification. Of course, with reducer you will be able to catch bigger area of moon, but not full disc. Celestron neximage, using webcam chip, gives about same magnification that you use 5mm eyepiece in telescope. For small size planets, webcam is good because of big magnification.

[nightfisher]

the spc900 acts like a 6.3 mm eyepiece, so you wont get a complete moon, also you wont get stars as they deep sky and the spc is not suited

[rowan46]

They're right, the reducer will only double the size of your image so it still won't fit all the moon in, you will have to stitch the images together, To get pictures of stars and things you need to get the camera modified for long exposure. there are tutorials for doing it yourself, if you're handy with a soldering iron. Or astronomiser will do it for a fee.

[msinclairinork]

They're right, the reducer will only double the size of your image so it still won't fit all the moon in, you will have to stitch the images together, To get pictures of stars and things you need to get the camera modified for long exposure. there are tutorials for doing it yourself, if you're handy with a soldering iron. Or astronomiser will do it for a fee.

Or a moon mosaic? saves soldering and looks cooler!

Michael

[rowan46]

to get a pic of the whole moon you may like to try afocal imaging (digiscoping) Afocal Astrophotography

Afocal Photography - A Darker View

[Paul.fr]

Thank you all for your replies and help. Being a total novice it will take me a while to try the various suggestions.

Had a wonderful view of Jupiter earlier this evening, and managed to get a couple of terrible pictures ;-) it just moves to quickly!

Ah well. Practice makes perfect so they say.

Let's hope the clouds stay away for a few hours so we can practice with Saturn around midnight.

[Bizibilder]

Don't panic!! If you have some movies from the webcam you can process them in registax or avistack (both free). This will give you a stack of your movie frames as a single enhanced image - this is quite simple if you follow one of several available tutorials using the default settings. Then, using imerge (also free), you can join the pictures up to make a single picture of the whole Moon (assuming you have taken several slightly overlapping "movies"). (PS imerge works on .bmp files so you may have to use something like paint.net (FREE!) to get the pictures in the right format.)

Have fun!!

[Earl]

get hold of registax, and microsoft ice.

film 6 sections on the moon 3 per side to allow plenty of overlap.

Registax the avi files, (plenty to play with a learn how to)

Ice the 6 final images together.

[brantuk]

With that camera and scope combination you'd need a .33x reducer to get a full disk shot of the moon in the field of view - I can't guarantee what level of quality you'd get though - probably not worth having. Put your details into dstring and you can work out the fov requirements

http://www.12dstring.me.uk/fov.php?aperture=70&flength=900&barlow=0.33333&pxsize=5.6&pxwidth=640&pxheight=480&binningw=1&binningh=1&day=12&month=2&year=2011

[bm1980]

With that camera and scope combination you'd need a .33x reducer to get a full disk shot of the moon in the field of view - I can't guarantee what level of quality you'd get though - probably not worth having. Put your details into dstring and you can work out the fov requirements

http://www.12dstring.me.uk/fov.php?aperture=70&flength=900&barlow=0.33333&pxsize=5.6&pxwidth=640&pxheight=480&binningw=1&binningh=1&day=12&month=2&year=2011

Thats a usefull piece of software thanks