Saturn last week..

[iceman]

I got up early last week to catch Saturn, Venus and the moon close together, and Mercury as well..

I didn't get to spot Mercury as my horizon is pretty blocked with trees and mountains, but I spent most of my time with Saturn, and tried taking some more images etc.

The seeing was horrible to begin with as it was low on the horizon.. near the end of my session the seeing had gotten better as it rose a bit, but by then I was running out of time and had used nearly all of my memory card on the camera.

I managed to get a few images to stack, here's the result..

The colours are a bit more natural and the result isn't as overprocessed as the one in the images->planets section, but the rings aren't as defined or crisp..

I've still got some work to do :(

[iceman]

Next time I'm going to try using the "movie" function of the camera, and then try to stack the frames of the avi.

I'm guessing though that my problem will be resolution, as my camera has 2 settings:

640x480 (fine)
640x480 (standard)

The "fine" mode can only be used with "Memory Stick Pro", and I only have the standard Memory Stick..

I'm just not sure how it's going to turn out at 640x480, when the resolution is 4 times that with the still pics.

Any thoughts or advice?

[kats]

Oh, Is that just A digital camera? Pretty impressive.

[iceman]

yah, i'm trying to borrow a webcam off a friend to see if I can do anything with it..

Without a tracking mount i'm still going to be limited, but with the short exposures needed for planets and the moon it might work out ok.

But this webcam i'm getting isn't a "pro" one or anything, i'm really not sure hw light-sensitive it's chip will be.

It'll be fun to experiment anyway.

[CSHumphrey]

Greetings you guys down south!

The movie mode might be the way to go. Just let the planet drift thru the FOV and then later go back on the computer and go frame by frame and pick out the clearest frames for stacking.

The only major down side is most cameras compress video frames to save space so you end up with more artifact and grain. :mad: So taking a bunch of stills and weeding out the bad frames might be better quality wise.

Astrovideo is great for webcam work.

[kats]

Digital Cameras use CCD's just the same as Astronomy equipment. Except these ones are really ****. So yeah, I doubt it will be very effective.

[rumples riot]

Hey Ice I know your considering getting the Toucam, but just wondered if you had considered the Meade LPI. I have had good success with this of late. The track option with a centeroid really works well.

Just wondering?

Paul

[Mick]

Nice Saturn Ice, I like using digital cameras because they are so easy, no need for a laptop. Here's a photo of Mars I took at opposition 2003, single photo with a 4.0 mp digital.

[rumples riot]

Great shot especially for a single shot. Theres good detail there.

Paul

[iceman]

Nice shot Mick! I like it! Unfortunately I missed the Mars 2003 expedition, I only got into astronomy in Dec/Jan last year.. So I missed the Saturn/Jupiter close passes as well :(

Hopefully i'll get some better images with the ToUcam, but I can already tell it's going to be almost as frustrating as using the digital camera, trying to find and centre the object in the webcam FOV just by using the finderscope :/

At least with a digicam, when it's in the EP you know it'll still be there for at least 10 seconds :)