Are there any high resolution planetary cameras?

[Poita (Peter)]

From my limited reading so far, it appears for planetary work you need a fast frame rate on the camera, as you want to freeze seeing and not have the planet rotate too much, to be able to get enough frames for stacking.

Most cameras that fit the bill seem to be 640x480 which looks great on screen, but isn't printable really.

Is there such a beast as a high resolution planetary camera, at any price?

Not that I could afford or use one, just out of curiosity.

[bojan]

I was using my Kyocera M400R in video mode (680x480) for this - the 4Mp resolution was too high (slow transfer rate to memory card was a problem) ..
I am guessing that any HDTV video recorder may be quite OK for what you want to achieve.
The issue may be the weight, though.

[iceman (Mike)]

640x480 is fine - like you said you want the fast frame rate and pixel size.

You can print reasonable size still - easily 6"x4", and if you have a really nice night of seeing, the image can be blown up to a little larger.

But what most planetary imagers do (and what I did when I was active) was make a composite of several images on a single 10x8" canvas (for example), so each individual image wasn't blown up to a large scale, but the sum of them all gave you a nice progression or series.

eg:
http://www.mikesalway.com.au/2009/01...ter-in-motion/

http://www.redbubble.com/people/mike...ynamic-jupiter

[mswhin63 (Malcolm)]

I have been using a webcam with CCD and HD 1280 x 960 (weird). The frame rate though will slow down and this a negative as you have less descent frames to remove turbulence in the atmosphere so high frame rate is about the most important.

I have a new camera I am testing but have little hopes as there is not much user control but it does have high frame rate. The other problem with this camera is CMOS but should provide better images than my DSLR.

[Poita (Peter)]

That is a great solution Mike, that progressive image of Jupiter is something I'd be extremely proud to have on my wall.

So there is no such thing as a high resolution, high frame-rate, small pixel-size camera available at *any* price?

I'm hoping that with the new faster bus systems like Apple/Intel's thunderbolt and USB3 and GigE etc. that higher resolutions at faster frame rates will be possible one day.

[naskies (Dave)]

The Red One can record 4500x1875 at 29.97 fps, 3000x1687 at 59.94 fps, or 1125x2000 at 120 fps in 12-bit RAW format.

http://www.red.com/products/red-one

The Phantom HD Gold can record up to 1920x1080 at 1000 fps or 1280x720 at 1500 fps in up to 14-bit depth.

http://www.visionresearch.com/produc...hantom-hdgold/

I've also heard of scientific cameras that can record at up to 100,000 fps (though one might think that there aren't enough photons coming from the planets to seriously image at those speeds).

[iceman (Mike)]

Quite right - don't forget that your exposure has to be minimum 1/frame rate.

So at 120fps, you have to have minimum 1/120s exposure. That's far too dim for the planets for most setups, especially at long focal lengths.

[Poita (Peter)]

Okay, so the cameras do exist, but you would need *serious* aperture to be able to use them at higher than say 30fps.

As technology advances then, we may see something like the CCD from the Phantom HD GOld with cooling and better light sensitivity, and be able to take high resolution images of the planets?

I guess in theory you could take one of those units today and modify it, run it at 30fps and get high-resolution results, Though at $100,000 for the camera, they are a little pricey to hack with.

I didn't even think of the RED-ONE, I'm not sure why as I've been on set with them being used on multiple occasions. They have a large sensor size though.