Jupiter Animation 6th May 2007

[middy]

Went around to Andrew's (astro_south) house last night to do some imaging with his Toucam.

This little anim was put together from a batch of AVI's using his scope (12.5" F6 Dob) with a 2x barlow. The seeing wasn't that great and some AVI's had hazy cloud drifting through.

Still got some more to process yet from my scope with a 3x barlow.

[iceman (Mike)]

Great detail there Andrew! Well captured and processed.. from a beautiful scope too!

[niko]

Great little animation there Andrew.

A few questions:

1. how are you imaging with a dob? I've tried a bit of afocal work but nothing to rival your results here. Any advice, hints etc greatly appreciated.
2. what's a motorised star tracker when it's a at home?

thanks

cheers

niko

[astro_south (Andrew)]

Great stuff Andrew - very clever

I think some of the blur - certainly in the first frame or two there is before we refocused it. Some of those frames look good. Be curious to see how those through your scope compare...as far as image scale on the screen they were comparable.

I lost all the AVI's on my laptop from this morning. When we made the new directory to output / store the files it didn't do it, rather it was reusing the same file on the root directory of c-drive. That is why the files weren't making a dent on my hard drive space. Nothing much lost though as we had the best of the seeing using your laptop. Something to remember next time though

[middy]

Originally Posted by astro_south

I lost all the AVI's on my laptop from this morning.

[middy]

Originally Posted by niko

1. how are you imaging with a dob? I've tried a bit of afocal work but nothing to rival your results here. Any advice, hints etc greatly appreciated.

Hi niko,

I don't have any form of tracking so I am limited to bright objects like planets and moon. I have been using a webcam to record video clips as the planet drifts through the view of the scope. When the planet exits the view I nudge the Dob a little and start another clip when the planet appears in the view again.

After capturing a number of video clips I stack the individual frames in Registax to get the images you see.

Mike (iceman) has written a great article on astrophotography with a Dob in the 'projects and articles' section of the website:
http://www.iceinspace.com.au/index.p...63,201,0,0,1,0

He also wrote another great article on processing planetary images:
http://www.iceinspace.com.au/index.p...63,306,0,0,1,0

Originally Posted by niko

2. what's a motorised star tracker when it's a at home?

That's just my fancy term for what everyone else calls a barndoor mount for when I want to do widefield shots of the sky with my digital camera.

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

You have really been bitten by the bug Andrews.

Starting on animations already

Very nicely done mate/s

A_S, when are you getting a tracking platform of the truss dob

[astro_south (Andrew)]

Originally Posted by [1ponders]

You have really been bitten by the bug Andrews.
Starting on animations already
Very nicely done mate/s
A_S, when are you getting a tracking platform of the truss dob

I should mention that it was Middy pushing all the buttons, including the processing - I just supplied the scope / camera / power and some nudging

I think the dob is a bit heavy for the comercial traking platforms. I will have to design and build a beefy version of Andrew's Star Tracker! You should have seen the images the scope was presenting of Jove last time at Cambroon - just ask JJJnettie about the mark of Zorro

[h0ughy (David)]

top stuff A's. Excellent

[niko]

Thanks for the cooments Andrew...

you doing afocal or prime focus photography with the dob?

niko

[middy]

Originally Posted by niko

you doing afocal or prime focus photography with the dob?

My normal method of imaging with my Dob is afocal using my point and shoot digital camera.

At the moment though astro_south has let me borrow his Toucam so I am doing some prime focus work with it.

[jjjnettie (Jeanette)]

LOL the Mark of Zorro. It truely was just like that.
Unfortunately the avi's captured looked better on the camera's view finder than they did on the puter. But I'll post one of the better pics for you to see.