Got a new toy to use with the ETX90 - and it isn't cloudy! I got the LPI mostly to use as a guidecam but am very pleased with my first go at the moon with it...all defaults in the software, this is a mosaic of shots 3, 4 and 5. The first two shots were a blurry mess as I forgot to choose track in the s/ware, I let the camera run for 180secs which I think is excessive however, like I said first light, very happy.
I guess the sharpness is due to Meade's optics, the Mak design and a small appature (90mm). I am happy because this is the first moon shot I have that shows something like what you can see at the eyepiece, my other shots at prime with the DSLR were dissapointing and soft - due to lack of magnification and seeing problems I suppose....but then I never tried stacking those shots....not sure of the best approach for lunar photos with a DSLR. If I want to get in close on some of those interesting lunar features how should I proceed - do I barlow the LPI and/or use eyepiece projection or the DSLR or ...? So much to learn...
Definitely barlow the LPI. The LPI will always give you far greater results than a single shot DSLR, just because you can take many more shots in a short period of time and reject the ones in bad seeing.
You almost have it! A Toucam is basically a video camera - it takes movies, stores tham as .avi files on your computer, and then specialist software "grabs" the best individual frames and combines them to give a final image.
The LPI is basically a still camera. It takes lots of individual shots, maybe 2 per second, and then you can combine these "in camera", so the final image displays on your computer screen - no messing around with movie files like Erwin.
Ganymeade, No special treatment was used to get that result, I just got lucky, perhaps the seeing was especially good but it did not seem to be, I focused carefully and used the defaults in the AutostarSuite s/ware for the MOON and let then let frames accumulate for three minutes. The only post processing was very mild noise removal with Neat Image, the ETX optics did the rest...
Still experimenting with the LPI, I had some cable issues but I think they are resolved shot a few more images last night in what seemed to be poor seeing but a few turned out ok. Iceman cleaned this one up for me (thanks), it is a shot of the S Polar region (I cannot name the features yet sorry I am too new to moon imaging/geography), stack of best 50 images taken with Autostarsuite,the LPI and an Orion shorty Barlow through the ETX90...
