After trying to work out the 'Desire' Long exposure Program for Modded Toucams, I can say that I finally think I have it nutted out. Chris (33South) helped by supplying the link to the User Guide.
Problem is, to use the scope I have to use tracking! As my tracking isn't up & running yet and being determined to give the 'Desire' program a run I decided to use the 'point and shoot' method. Just aim the Toucam unmagnified at an object and hope for the best! I sat it on top of a piano stool!
What I ended up with are 3 widefield shots of Orion, LMC and Carina area including the Crux. I know they are nothing special but it was only my first attempt at using Desire & widefield. It will still take me a while to learn how to capture better, but I like them.
All I did was recorded in Desire & resized in PhotShop. No levels played with.
Transparency: 10/10 Seeing: 8/10
Seems a waste of a perfect seeing night but I wanted to try this out. Other great nights for scoping will come.
As usual, comments are welcome & you can copy them & have a go at playing with them.
Ken I'm no expert but see in your 3 images there's a sprinkling of blue and red dots , these are called hot pixels or noise . To vanquish them you take a exposure the same length with the front of the camera covered to make a dark frame , this is combined with the live image to subtract the noise and hopefully the final image will display less . I have yet to try any long exposures with my ToUcam but with the LPI imager it has a max shutter opening of 14 secs , anything over a sec the image is satured with noise . To counter it i go into the LPIs capture screen and make a dark frame , then when imaging every frame captured is automatically subtracted . Hopefully some of the guys might be able to explain better
Ummm, yep. That all made sense. To someone anyway, but not to me
I think I sort of know what you mean, It will take me a while to work out how to do it and how to use it. I'll get there eventually. At least I'm having fun!!!!
Glad to see you got things working, you should be pleased with those images as a starting point.
Having fun and learning stuff thats a good combination.
Well done Ken ! you can't keep a good man down Well Ken seems to me your having a ball with your camera mate and that's what this hobbie is about champ ! where not scientists dude ! where here to have some fun .
By the way Ken , whats wrong with the tracking on EQ mount ? PM me with details maybe I can help .
Ummm, yep. That all made sense. To someone anyway, but not to me
Nice work Ken, you're learning fast. The dark frame thing is simple, it's merely an image taken with the cap on, for the same exposure time as you're using. That frame will simply be black, but any noise (dots) that are generated by the camera pixels will still be there. By subtracting that dark frame the software will know which pixels are real info and which are noise or hot pixels and can remove them....
Thanks everyone for your comments and encouragement!
I'm having a Blast!!!!
Quote:
Originally Posted by atalas
By the way Ken , whats wrong with the tracking on EQ mount ? PM me with details maybe I can help .
Thanks Louie, It's cool. Bert has it back at his place to set it up perfect for tracking at all speeds (Sidereal, Lunar, Solar) and to mount it on the worm gear plate. Then it will be "look out DSO's, here I come"
P.S. I believe I labelled pic 2 wrong. After studying it, I think that I captured SMC and that's the LMC up in the top left corner!
Thanks everyone for your comments and encouragement!
I'm having a Blast!!!!
Thanks Louie, It's cool. Bert has it back at his place to set it up perfect for tracking at all speeds (Sidereal, Lunar, Solar) and to mount it on the worm gear plate. Then it will be "look out DSO's, here I come"
P.S. I believe I labelled pic 2 wrong. After studying it, I think that I captured SMC and that's the LMC up in the top left corner!
Cool Ken, see how observant I am ! didn't even notice .
Have you thought about the GoTo upgrade for the piano stool?
You could sit on it and press GoTo Orion and it would spin you around. Not sure how difficult polar alignment would be...
