Go Back   IceInSpace > Equipment > Astrophotography and Imaging Equipment and Discussions

Reply
 
Thread Tools Rate Thread
  #1  
Old 04-05-2008, 10:22 PM
Cluster
Registered User

Cluster is offline
 
Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: Adelaide, Australia
Posts: 26
First Philips 900nc photos - can it be better?

Hi,

I've finally got my Philips 900nc webcam working. The first one sent to me from a seller in Canada did not work. It would be detected by the system but the drivers could not be installed (even if attempted manually). Finally, the seller was good enough to send another.

On the weekend I tried imaging Jupiter using K3CCD. I have a 6 inch GSO reflector and used a 5x GSO apo barlow. The image without a barlow, or my 3x barlow was just too small.

The results:

Stacked image:
http://users.on.net/~mmienik/photos/astronomy/planets/Jupiter%20-%2045deg,%205x%20GSO%20apo%20-%205.jpg

Movie used to create it. Not much detail visible and a fair amount of boiling and fringing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BKlDNEhc7o

Apart from the seeing conditions being less than ideal, how much more detail can I expect to see?

How is magnification calculated for my 150mm F5 reflector with 5x barlow?

It was not possible to focus the image more sharply. Jupiter was about 45 degrees in the sky but I didn't want to wait to 5am.

The GSO 5x apo barlow is fine but there's still a lot of false colour in the image. Would buying a Televue barlow, or a powermate improve the image substantially? I don't want to waste a lot of money needlessly, seeing as this is only a 6 inch scope.

Thanks,
Reply With Quote
  #2  
Old 05-05-2008, 08:56 PM
war bird's Avatar
war bird
Beam me up scotty

war bird is offline
 
Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: Camberwell .vic
Posts: 50
not a bad start, i have also just started imaging with the 900
and initial results are positive.
if you go to [solar stm images] there is my first pic of saturn taken with it through a 6 ''.
Reply With Quote
  #3  
Old 06-05-2008, 02:28 AM
iceman's Avatar
iceman (Mike)
Sir Post a Lot!

iceman is offline
 
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Gosford, NSW, Australia
Posts: 36,760
How did you take the image? Can you describe your capture and processing?

The colour channels are WAY out of alignment - it will improve dramatically just be realigning the colour channels.

You should wait for the object to get higher, and you'll get less atmospheric dispertion. I'm not sure how good the GSO 5x barlows are - with a colour camera, it may not bring the channels back together very well which will make aligning and registering the frames difficult unless you pre-split the avi into the RGB colour channels.
Reply With Quote
  #4  
Old 06-05-2008, 07:26 PM
Cluster
Registered User

Cluster is offline
 
Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: Adelaide, Australia
Posts: 26
Quote:
Originally Posted by iceman View Post
How did you take the image? Can you describe your capture and processing?
I got the unmodified webcam and adapter, downloaded K3CCD, collimated and rushed outside to take my first videos. I tried without a barlow first but that yielded very small images of jupiter. 3x barlow was ok, 5x is good but I feel it may be magnifying too much. It's only a 150mm reflector.

Quote:
Originally Posted by iceman View Post
The colour channels are WAY out of alignment - it will improve dramatically just be realigning the colour channels.
The video faithfully represents what I could see at high magnification through an eyepiece: thick bands across the planet and not much else. Focus could be better but after trying for half an hour I couldn't improve it. Waiting until next month when Jupiter is closer and higher in the sky at a reasonable time will help.

I haven't tried playing with colour channels, splitting them, etc. I merely used K3CCD's planet wizard. K3CCD has a lot of options I haven't played with yet.

I have had problems with collimation in the past. The telescope arrived way out of collimation and the secondary had to be moved outward as far as possible. I've used a long tube Cheshire with crosshairs and a laser collimator. As I don't have access to another 6" telescope it's difficult to tell whether what I'm seeing is poor because of the telescope or just conditions.
Reply With Quote
  #5  
Old 07-05-2008, 04:12 AM
iceman's Avatar
iceman (Mike)
Sir Post a Lot!

iceman is offline
 
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Gosford, NSW, Australia
Posts: 36,760
For a 6" scope, 5x might be too much unless the conditions are very good.

Use a 3x next time, and wait for the planet to get a bit higher in the sky (any time after 1 or 2am), and post your results.
Reply With Quote
  #6  
Old 08-05-2008, 08:03 PM
Robert_T's Avatar
Robert_T
aiming for 2nd Halley's

Robert_T is offline
 
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: Australia
Posts: 2,959
Hi there, if I were to offer one piece of advice it would be to focus on focus... before laying out for a powermate you'd be better off investing in an electric focusser. It's virtually impossible to get the focus accuracy you need on a screen when manually focussing.

After focus comes collimation...

cheers,

Rob
Reply With Quote
Reply

Bookmarks

Thread Tools
Rate This Thread
Rate This Thread:

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT +10. The time is now 09:44 PM.

Powered by vBulletin Version 3.8.7 | Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Advertisement
Testar
Advertisement
Bintel
Advertisement