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View Full Version here: : Belt Mod Saturn 19.8.21


Mickoid
20-08-2021, 05:46 PM
Did a Rowan Belt Mod to my HEQ5pro late Thursday afternoon and was testing it out on the planets that night. At 5000mm focal length there was a definite smoothness to the movement of the planet within the frame. With the previous cog drive, at this focal length, there was always a slight shimmer in the planet's movement. I don't know if this will have any great impact on my final planetary imaging results but it was nice to see some difference.

I had hoped to try it out on some deep sky object at a shorter focal length to see how good my subs looked but clouds rolled in and that will have to wait for another night. Not too sure if the GOTO was working as well though :question: Maybe I have to recalibrate the new drive system somehow. The good thing is it still works :lol: it's also a lot quieter while slewing.

Saturn: Best 33% of 18000 frames @ 50fps, 3200iso, 5 X Powermate 1000mm f5 Newtonian, Canon 550d Crop mode.

johnnyjetski
20-08-2021, 09:03 PM
Great result...with that 5 x powermate, its really pushing limits. The picture is beautiful
Dont worry about your Gotto. You probably just rushed your polar alignment a little.
Great work!! :)

Startrek
20-08-2021, 10:19 PM
Mick,
That’s a good result for a first run with your new belt modded mount
Well done !!
Same scope as mine , GSO or Skywatcher or other ?
Capture program ?
Processing software ?
Cheers
Martin

Mickoid
21-08-2021, 01:12 AM
Thanks John, I hope you're right. I did a one star alignment on Antares and it slewed a fair way south of where it should have been pointing.

Thanks Martin, the scope is a no name brand but resembles a Saxon 8 inch. This was captured by the cameras internal video function of Crop mode where it only uses a 800X600 pixel array of the full sensor pixel array thereby producing a 1:1 pixel ratio. Great for planetary as it also shoots at 50fps. I convert the cameras .mov file to .avi format in Pipp. From there I run it through Autostakkert and Registax where it is sharpened with final touches in Photoshop.

Startrek
21-08-2021, 07:52 AM
Thanks
I use BYEOS to capture , by setting to 5 x zoom in the software my 600D gets close to 1:1 pixel resolution but not exact
Also my videos only shoot at 30fps
My recent attempts have been only 1500 frames long , maybe I should capture longer but say up to 3000 . Advice is if you capture longer than say 3 minutes the planets rotation will start to “smear” your video and your tracking with have introduce a slight bias as well
Anyway lots of experimentation with planetary
Cheers
Martin