All sky camera

[IanL]

Has anyone made an all sky camera for monitoring cloud and capturing fireballs etc. I am thinking of building one of these housed in PVC plumbing pipe with a dome over the top. I am looking at using a DMK camera inside this possibly with a fish eye lens.

I would be interested in hearing from anyone who has built one of these or anyone who has any views on it.
If I do go-ahead with it I will post the project as I go.

Cheers
Ian

[Karls48]

Hi Ian, I have been capturing meteor images for some time now and after lot of trial and error I settled on UFOCapture software, GStar camera and Fujicon 4-8mm f 0.95 lenses. Alternative software/ hardware for motion detection is DVR-2000 PCI card that you can get on eBay for about $20. It works OK for general purpose of detecting movement in the sky (meteors, satellites, aircraft, birds, insects and so on). You can also get on eBay waterproof security camera enclosure for about $35. Have look on
http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?p=224846&highlight=Meteor+capture+cheap#post 224846
and http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=34101 (http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=34101)

[IanL]

Karl have you any images of the shots you taken. I am looking at the sunex fisheye lens miniture version for the DMK. The images look ok with this lens but keen to see others
Have you a website that displays the images
Cheers
Ian

[rsbfoto]

Hi,

Here http://rainerehlert.com/AS-CD/RS-AllSky-00.jpg is an All-Sky camera using a Sunex Fisheye lens and a The Imaging Source DFK 41AF02.AS camera.

[IanL]

Hi thanks for that. I have sent 2 emails to Sunex regarding their fish eye lens but had no feedback yet.

I am lookng to use the DMK21 usb type camera. But i want to know if the mini CCD fisheye lens will cover the size of chip in that model.
By way of powering the unit i am looking at power over ethernet (POE) This is the way I power CCTV cams i install for my work. Housing the unit i will buy some form of housing over the internet.
Thanks for the link

I'll post as i do it.

Ian

[bojan]

K-Mart (in Mulgrave, Melbourne) has convex mirror, 95mm dia, on special for AU$1.00.
This, in combination with moderate telephoto (~100mm) on Canon 400D from 0.5m distance makes a good ad hoc setup for allsky camera.
I bought 4 of them yesterday, and one of the first results from last evening is attached.

[IanL]

Thanks for the Bojan, Can you tell me is it a plastic coating or true mirrow coating. I was in locall car store yesterday looking for them. But they only had the sort of duff plastic coating on them which i did not think would be any good.

Cheers
Ian

[bojan]

The mirrors I have are plastic (acrylic?) with true mirror coating on the other side.
In original packing it looks pretty dull but outside and after washing with windex is not that bad. One of them was slightly damaged, and plactic was wrinkled on one place.. but for AU$1.00.... it is great.
I also found local supplier
http://www.acrilconvex.com.au/?gclid=CKzO-4W4-pQCFQv7agodTn7Pqw
but he wants AU$170.00 for quarter sphere, 470mm dia, a bit too expensive for my taste. It is also a bit too large.
I think the ideal size for the purpose would be between 150 and 250mm diameter.

EDIT:
some other links to local suppliers are below:

http://www.polite.com.au/pec_html/pec_tfc_convex.html?gclid=CJKL3bO5-pQCFSEbagodaHoMrQ
http://www.convexmirrors.com.au/?gclid=COPI07G5-pQCFRwsagod6HC5qg

I imagine that side mirrors used for cars (retrovisor ? ) would also be quite OK

[Ian Robinson]

How about one of the domed mirrors you find on the corner of buildings.

Would work a treat placed on the ground with a camera placed above looking straight down at it's apex .

[jjjnettie]

I picked up 2 lenses for my Gstar at Jaycar Aspley. A 4mm lens for $18 and a 2.8-12mm lens $47?
I bought them specifically for Meteor showers.
Both cover a fair amount of sky.
I seem to remember that they did have a 2mm lens for $18 as well.
Could be worth your while having a look. For the price, you can't go wrong.

[rsbfoto]

Hi Ian,

This is the lens I am using

http://www.optics-online.com/OOL/DSL/DSL215.PDF

Page 2 you can see the how much it would cover with the DMK21.... Perhaps a DMK 31... would be better ?

[bojan]

They are "C" mount, right?

The beauty with mirror allsky (including domed corner mirror) is, that there is nothing more you have to do.. just place it on the grass (or chair) as it is and mount the camera above it.

[IanL]

Hi all thanks for the replies. Many options to choose from now.

RSBFOTO
I did have a look at your web site in the research of the All sky cam. Wonderfull photos you capture. When you bought the Sunex lens did it go straight on the camera thread of the DMK or did you have to purchase an adapter.

Ian

[theodog]

Hi Ian,
I used to be part of the Eastern Australian Fireball Network. It was coordinated by Rob McNaught. We had stations at Coonabarabran, Tamworth, Coonamble, Mittagong (me) and The Magellen Observatory Goulburn. The equipment used was a video cam (not sure what type) pointed towards a convex mirror for whole sky coverage, and Cannon T70's with fisheye 16mm lenses. The vid allowed 1/25sec times while T70's allowed accurate start and finish positions.
Fireball were caught on a regular basis and their paths through the atmosphere were calculated by Rob.

Good luck with your project as I havent heard of such a project since the EAFN.:D

[IanL]

Yeah it’s a sort of mini project and something I have been wanting to do. Funny thing is that Rob's talk at the QLD astrofest fired up my motivation with it. I met Rob at the QLD astrofest and found his talk very interesting and informative. Such a nice chap and a Scotsman like me. I used to pass an observiroty in Scotland everyday going to work. Just a small one in someones back door and i thought who would be using that around this area. Well i found out all these miles away in Australia. Rob used to use it to study and work in. Small world.

[rsbfoto]

Hi Ian,

You need an adapter and Sunex sells them too. They cost about US $ 15.00 The lens itself has the webcam thread M12x0.5 and the adapter is a C or CS mount thread with 1" x 32tpi

[IanL]

Look what the wife came in with yesterday. I nearly fell off the seat. WHERE DID YOU GET THAT I ASKED:eyepop:After darting about the car shops looking for convex mirrors in the past couple of days

MMMM got me thinking convex mirror mmmm All sky bear cam......Nope
I'll post test resuts later when its dark

Ian:lol:

[rsbfoto]

Hi Ian,

Yesterday I made a new test as I wanted to see how the sky looks from my new observatory under construction.

Here you can take a look at it. Those are 571 jpg images 920x920 pixels and then made a wmv movie out of it. The sequence was acquired with Lucam recorder from 21:16 hours to 06:46 hours today August 10th.

~2.4MB http://rainerehlert.com/ObsReal14/cons/20080810-Meteoro.wmv

and this is my new observatory

http://rainerehlert.com/ObsReal14/cons/Pano-Obser-01a.jpg

[avandonk]

Keep your eyes on Ebay for high quality fisheye lenses. Here is a bit of my fisheye collection of lenses from ebay. They are rare and not cheap.

These are all for 16mm or 1/2inch C-mount.
197 deg f/1.9 FL 1.98mm
167 deg f/1.5 FL 3.45mm
120 deg f/1.4 FL 4.0mm

The really annoying thing is since I have had these lenses it was cloudy on all nights of meteor showers. I have to stop them down to f/2.8 to get rid of light pollution at 2.6 sec exposure with a GStarEX. At a dark sky site they are very fast.

I have been a bit slack in this area as I have lots of other things to do and try to get correct.

Bert

[avandonk]

Here are a couple of old threads with images.

http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=14356&highlight=orionids

http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=14325&highlight=orionids

Bert

[avandonk]

Here is a video showing the sky from the observatory with the 1.98mm lens. Diagonal FOV is about 180 degrees and south is down. I have put a piece of LPS filter in the GstarEX. The integration is 128 frames or 2.6 sec exposure at f/2.8. Scorpio is just above center and Crux is at near bottom right.
700k wmv
http://members.optusnet.com.au/~fmlee/skyvid.wmv

Bert

[rsbfoto]

Hi,

Last weekend I was able to finally realize a necessary improvement so I can leave the camera setup even during the day and the Sun does not damage the camera and lens.

Here you can see it open position

http://rainerehlert.com/AS-CD/RS-AllSky-04.jpg

and here in closed position

http://rainerehlert.com/AS-CD/RS-AllSky-05.jpg

The shutter moves via a stepper motor and I use my Focuser program in order to setup the different positions over the year

http://rainerehlert.com/AS-CD/RS-AllSky-03.jpg

I am looking right now for an adequate enclosure and then the camera will be setup in this case with a wider dome.

Thanks for looking