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Old 18-04-2009, 02:21 PM
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peter_4059 (Peter)
Big Scopes are Cool

peter_4059 is offline
 
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: SE Tasmania
Posts: 4,532
The Phillips SPC900 is a colour webcam so will plug into your computer USB port but is limited to less than 1 sec max exposure so won't be sensitive enough for deep space stuff but great for Jup, Saturn and the moon.

The Gstar is a video camera (has a video out connection) so you need a video grabber to capture the images onto a laptop. It has a much more sensitive monochrome chip than a webcam so is really designed for deep space stuff.

To make full use of a deep space camera you need to be able to take a long exposure (preferably minutes but at least a few seconds). This is where tracking becomes important because if you don't track you end up with star trails if the exposure is more than a couple of seconds.

I started with a webcam and my 10" dob (and I still use it today for moon and planets). You end up capturing an AVI movie file with the planet moving across the field of view. You can convert this file into a series of bitmap still images and then stack these to improve the signal to noise ratio and end up with a single stacked still image.
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