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Old 04-04-2017, 08:27 AM
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sil (Steve)
Not even a speck of dust

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Join Date: Jun 2012
Location: Canberra
Posts: 1,474
Yes, imaging is a steep learning curve and not initially intuitive. Having photographic experience means nothing and sometimes less than that to help you take a "photo" with a telescope. These small "eyepiece cameras" are nowhere near as good as your eye so taking the eyepiece out and popping the camera in you dont get anywhere near the same detail and colour you see throuhg the eyepiece. plus slight tolerance differences in construction means the camera isn't necessarily seeing what you saw through the eyepiece so you often have to hunt around a little to recenter the planet. Plus as pointed out above, you need to refocus to ensure the sensor is at the focal plane. As the small sensor size in these cameras makes the camera perform like a short eyepiece at around 5mm or less (not sure if there is a correct term for eyepieces around 5mm vs those around 30mm, wideangle and telephoto fit for the numbers but not the optics). So as with an eyepiece size approaching 0mm the magnification is increased and atmospheric conditions (seeing) start to blur the view and even make the target "swim" in the view.

Add to this you are typically never ever pressing a button and taking a photo. Instead you take a video and then process that to an image by using the best hundreds or thousands of still frames from the video. The software supplied with these cameras is often poor too, FireCapture and SharpCap are free alternatives written with astrophotography in mind and well worth getting to grips with one of these and you'll find plenty of people can help with getting things running smooth for you.

I hated the orion planetary camera and its software and gave it away and went with a zwo as an upgrade to my modded Toucam. hopefully your starshoot performs well for you, I dont doubt it will and probably a first step on a downward spiral of Gear Acquisition Syndrome.
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