Widefield Toucam & Desire-1st attempts

[ballaratdragons]

After trying to work out the 'Desire' Long exposure Program for Modded Toucams, I can say that I finally think I have it nutted out. Chris (33South) helped by supplying the link to the User Guide.

Problem is, to use the scope I have to use tracking! As my tracking isn't up & running yet and being determined to give the 'Desire' program a run I decided to use the 'point and shoot' method. Just aim the Toucam unmagnified at an object and hope for the best! I sat it on top of a piano stool!

What I ended up with are 3 widefield shots of Orion, LMC and Carina area including the Crux. I know they are nothing special but it was only my first attempt at using Desire & widefield. It will still take me a while to learn how to capture better, but I like them.

All I did was recorded in Desire & resized in PhotShop. No levels played with.
Transparency: 10/10 Seeing: 8/10
Seems a waste of a perfect seeing night but I wanted to try this out. Other great nights for scoping will come.

As usual, comments are welcome & you can copy them & have a go at playing with them.

These are my 3 attempts.

1: Orion - 1 frame @ 20 seconds
2: LMC - 1 frame @ 15 seconds
3: Crux & Carina - 1 frame @ 20 seconds

[fringe_dweller]

wow great fun eh mate - be able to catch aurora's with that setup too :)

[ballaratdragons]

Yep Kearn! If I ever see any that is!! Haven't seen any since I was a kid. Looking forward to trying lightning though! ;)

I just noticed in my post above that the thumbnails look better than the attached big pics :lol:

[beren]

:) Nice work ken , not sure with the ToUcam/desire but would you be able to get a dark frame for noise subtraction.

[ballaratdragons]

Thanks Stuart,

I don't know what a 'Dark Frame' is. How do I 'get one/make one/copy one? and what's it for?

[beren]

Ken I'm no expert but see in your 3 images there's a sprinkling of blue and red dots , these are called hot pixels or noise . To vanquish them you take a exposure the same length with the front of the camera covered to make a dark frame , this is combined with the live image to subtract the noise and hopefully the final image will display less . I have yet to try any long exposures with my ToUcam but with the LPI imager it has a max shutter opening of 14 secs , anything over a sec the image is satured with noise . To counter it i go into the LPIs capture screen and make a dark frame , then when imaging every frame captured is automatically subtracted . Hopefully some of the guys might be able to explain better :P

[ballaratdragons]

Thanks Stuart.

Ummm, yep. That all made sense. To someone anyway, but not to me :lol:

I think I sort of know what you mean, It will take me a while to work out how to do it and how to use it. I'll get there eventually. At least I'm having fun!!!!

[beren]

;) thats right mate keep it fun {plenty of room for frustration later} you should be stoked well done :)

[33South]

Glad to see you got things working, you should be pleased with those images as a starting point.
Having fun and learning stuff thats a good combination. :)

[atalas]

Well done Ken ! you can't keep a good man down :) Well Ken seems to me your having a ball with your camera mate and that's what this hobbie is about champ ! where not scientists dude ! where here to have some fun . :)
By the way Ken , whats wrong with the tracking on EQ mount ? PM me with details maybe I can help .

[ving]

hehe!!! sweet ken :D
gotta get me one of those birds one day :)

[acropolite]

BD wrote Nice work Ken, you're learning fast. The dark frame thing is simple, it's merely an image taken with the cap on, for the same exposure time as you're using. That frame will simply be black, but any noise (dots) that are generated by the camera pixels will still be there. By subtracting that dark frame the software will know which pixels are real info and which are noise or hot pixels and can remove them....:painting:

[TidaLpHasE]

:)Great effort Ken, you are well on your way with this imaging stuff, now comes the addiction, and plenty of frustration.

As said previous, it's all about having fun and enjoying what you are doing.

Keep at it;)

[Striker]

Excellant work Kenny.....you can worry about doing all the darks and flat frames when you get more experienced.

Isn't it so much fun doing imaging.

[ballaratdragons]

Thanks everyone for your comments and encouragement! :)

I'm having a Blast!!!!

Thanks Louie, It's cool. Bert has it back at his place to set it up perfect for tracking at all speeds (Sidereal, Lunar, Solar) and to mount it on the worm gear plate. Then it will be "look out DSO's, here I come" :lol:

P.S. I believe I labelled pic 2 wrong. After studying it, I think that I captured SMC and that's the LMC up in the top left corner! :P

[atalas]

Cool Ken, see how observant I am ! didn't even notice . :P

[ballaratdragons]

:lol: at all of us Louie. No-one noticed! I thought it looked strange for LMC. LOL!

[Stu]

I like the orion shot.

Have you thought about the GoTo upgrade for the piano stool?
You could sit on it and press GoTo Orion and it would spin you around. Not sure how difficult polar alignment would be...

[ballaratdragons]

And I could play piano while viewing :lol:

[Stu]

lol...

[sheeny]

Well done, Ken!:thumbsup:

I too am keen to get into some wide field shots with the ToUcam. I have a Mogg adapter so I can put all my Olympus OM lenses on the ToUcam and piggy back them on the scope.

Did you just use the standard ToUcam lens to capture these images?

Al.

[davidpretorius]

well done ken!!!

dark frame are something i am working on too. With the scope it is easy, you put the telescope end cap on so no light comes through and you then take a long exposure of darkness (5 or 10 seconds, whatever you will be taking with your stars). The blue and red pixels should still show up and you can then subtract them in photoshop from your star image..

It is a field of study all in itself.

I will be doing some wide field with mine attached to the tracking dob.

It is so much fun!!!

[ballaratdragons]

Thanks Davo. We never stop learning, do we! Good stuff all this imaging!


Yep! I took the 1 1/4" adaptor off and just used the little chromed lense that comes standard with the Toucam. I attached the little flexible legged tripod and pointed roughly in the area I wanted to image! :)