Help on a project

[Somnium (Aidan)]

i wanted to solicit the thoughts and opinions of the collective IIS wisdom for a little project i would like to undertake. recently the 5 year old daughter of a friend of mine passed away after a battle with cancer for quite some time. this has obviously been very difficult for them. He asked me if i would be able to take a picture of alpha centauri because, for whatever reason, this star reminds them of her. i wanted to do something a little more than just a featureless pin point of light i wanted to make something a bit special for them. i am happy to make this a bit of a project and have a few focal lengths to shoot from 18, 400, 480, 1000, 2000, 2500 mm. if anyone has any interesting ways of compiling or presenting this object i would love to hear about it

thanks for your help

[Atmos (Colin)]

It sounds like a nice idea, if it is something that will help him through, it's worth the effort.

What pops into my mind is to have a zooming movie. Start with the 18mm and zoom into the FOV of the 400mm where that then zooms into the 1000mm ect. Then give all of the individual images over as well.

[Somnium (Aidan)]

not a bad idea Colin

[raymo]

I know nothing about stitching videos together. The first thing is to make
the series of frames interesting. Say sky with A.Cent at the centre. [18mm], same thing at 400mm, same again at 1000, and 2000, and 2800mm. Because it is a double star you would have to then use a
barlow on 2000 making 4000, same again on 2800 making 5600.
At 5600mm the doubleness would begin to show. one further increase
using either a 3x barlow or eyepiece projection would show the pair
clearly separated. You could finish the series by defocussing the pair
so that you have a pair of diffraction rings.
If a video proves to be difficult, they could all be printed out at say 8x10"
and put into an attractive wallet or folder with the diff. rings as the front cover as well as being the last image inside.
Hope you come up with a good result whatever you decide to do.
raymo

[blink138 (Pat)]

how unimaginably sad for a parent
i do hope we get some great ideas from our wonderful community that is IIS!
pat

[RAJAH235]

Aidan,
That's such sad news.
Condolences to the family.

As for your task of creating the video....no idea but for joining videos, I use this program.
It's not free, (just $29.00) but it does work extremely well.
&, they do have support for it.
ref; > http://www.alloksoft.com/joiner.htm

[Somnium (Aidan)]

it is an unbelievably sad occasion, i don't know how they are dealing with it

i think the video idea is a good one, zooming in and splitting the close binary would be good. it also gives me the opportunity to really personalise it and post it to the world.

does anyone know what software will allow me to zoom in on images and transition effectively? i generally use windows movie maker for videos but i dont think this or Alloksoft will do this.

[Atmos (Colin)]

I've done it in the past using iMovie on my phone. Took me about 20 minutes to do half a dozen or so images just getting the transitioning perfectly smooth.

[Somnium (Aidan)]

anything windows based ?