Quote:
Originally Posted by LostInSp_ce
Planetary imaging with the Dob may not be the easiest or the best way to go about it, but it can yield interesting results and will save you from having to buy another scope.
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Or encourage you to buy more scopes
I should have mentioned the asi120 is probably the best cheap imaging cam out there, but its not a piece of garbage and will get stunning results. Its strong for lunar/solar/planetary but imagine isnt like using a regular camera and pressing a button *click* you have a photo. This world is about capturing hundred/thousands of photos in the form of video frames and stacking /processing them to eventually have a single photo to show for it. Tools like PIPP can process a video and recenter the planet (align/register it) in each frame making it easier if you dont have a tracking mount. The centered frames you can give to registax or autostakkert to process easier. AS!2 does its own wavelets/sharpening and registax gives you wavelets controls to reveal features. Your video will probably start with the planet as a bright blob swimming in water but you can get amazingly detailed images after the processing step from it.
ZWO are pretty strong in astroimagers and the 120 (colour or mono) are their entry level cams and as I said, they are very good. I dont see any point looking at orion/celestron offerings, ultimately it seems most brands are using the same sensors and sometimes you get stuck with dodgy custom drivers/capture software. the zwo cams just work and typically perform better then competitors using the same sensor. I'd recommend mono for you though, the colour would be nice but you only have three practical colour targets to image anyway (Mars/Jup/Saturn) (dob imagers please correct me if i'm wrong here, I dont know how well a dob can image neptune), everything else is probably going to require tracking and longer exposure times which may not be possible with your dob). So probably best going for mono for best quality imaging, will be awesome for lunar and maybe solar if you have a filter. Plus if you get put off by the process you haven't lost much and a 120 should be an easy second hand sell.
ZWO have a range of offerings too if you want to go up the tree with imaging. Including manual filter wheels and models with /without cooling. The zwo cams make good guide cameras too so again if you upgrade a 120 its going to be useful for guiding for someone. Damn it, i'm convincing myself my 120mc was a mistake, should have been the 120mm
oh well next buy I've got picked out is a zwo mono with cooling.
All the software I've mentioned btw is free. The zwo drivers are stable and from what I've seen all zwo cams can be used for planetary (fast fps) and at least brighter deep sky (longer exposure times per frame). I prefer FireCapture (its not firewire only capture, its usb too), seems to support most/all astroimager brands and I like its features. Either way you'll bee spending time fiddling with settings. Getting a good exposure on screen I find a waste of time with planetary as stacking and wavelets tends to bring up the exposure without overexposing. So I drop exposure a few ms to gain a little fps, likewise I capture at a cropped resolution often somewhere near 640x480 or under instead of the full resolution of the cam just to gain fps. The more fps the more subs you end up with so ultimately the more (hopefully) good subs will be there to work with.