Moon 27-05-12

[Rex]

G'day everyone,
Been reading all about how you can modify a webcam to use with your scope. Sounded really interesting so I thought I would give it a go. So last weekend I went and bought a webcam, pulled it apart, removed the lense to reveil the ccd chip, (or cmos, not sure how to tell by looking at it), and reassembled it. Glued a 1.25" nose piece on and stuck it in the Dobs to see what it would produce. This is about 950 frames all up and 80% of them used to stack. This is the "Mare Nectaris" area. Fairly happy with it, perhaps a little dark. Can only get better with practice.
thanks for looking.

[Astroman]

Looking good. What was the webcam you are using?

[Shark Bait]

Dark is better than washed out. Great first webcam image.

I have just pulled apart a webcam and mounted it to an eyepiece body and will test it out when the weather clears.

Did you leave the IR filter on or ditch it?

[Rex]

Thanks Andrew. The webcam is an off the shelf Microsoft c615. I looked at about 50 different ones and they all seemed the same so i went for the one that looked like it would be the easiest to modify.

[Rex]

Thanks Stu.
No idea about the filter sorry. When I pulled it apart there was a lense on top of the chip as there normally is. Not sure if they all do but this model had a little motorised focuser as part of the lense assembly. I just cut the soldered legs to the whole lense assembly and pulled it off. It looks like the bare chip but don't know enough about it to say for sure that there isn't a filter glued to the front.

[Shark Bait]

My webcam had a small filter in front of the chip and if viewed on an angle it had a reddish tint. I unscrewed the small IR mount that was covering the chip.

Astrophotographers tend to remove these filters from their expensive cannon DSLR cameras. I decided to do the same with the webcam. Hope I made the right decision. :shrug: I will find out soon enough.

[FlashDrive]

That's alright for a 1st image .... especially when it was a ' test ' to see how it went.

On'ya Rex ...keep going :thumbsup:

Flash :hi: