First light with the Toucam - Saturn

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

Yep blue like yours.

I might have gotten away with the magnification if I hadn't upped the resolution so much. Seeing wan't toooo bad on the night. I'm going to experiment a bit with mags and resolution next time out.

[iceman (Mike)]

I always use 640x480, but I can only go as high as f/10 with my dob, and that's with a 2x barlow.

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

I was trying to use 640 X 480 @ about f/40 - 45.

I haven't done the complete maths but thats allowing for 2X mag each even though technically thats not the correct mag due to image placement in each barlow and then projected onto the Toucam chip (probably closeer to 6X).

At the moment I'm trying to work out a way to attach my ToUcam to my meade variable tele-extender containing a 20mm eyepiece to up the f/ration to around f/50 or more without using a barlow to keep lense elements to a minimun. Haven't quite worked it out yet

I'll drop the resolution back and bit and see how I go.

BTW Welcome Back Hope you had a great holiday!

[cometcatcher (Kevin)]

That's your first planet shot? Your a natural! Can't wait to see more!

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

Thanks Kevin. At the moment I'll settle for clear skies to take a few more

[Conus]

Excellent first Saturn. Better by far than my first attempt. Whenever the seeing allows, I try to use 5 fps. Lately I've been getting a lot more out of my image sequences by hand-eliminating the bad frames in the freeware program Virtual Dub before bringing it into Registax. You just use the right arrow key to move through your avi, dumping the fuzzy frames with the delete key. Save as a new avi, then go to Registax.

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

Thanks for the heads up Steve. I"ll look into that. Anything that will help with the final image quality will be a bonus.

I've just taken a heap on new avis so lets see if I wasn't a fluke

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

I must have had very good seeing whe I recorded that image. The follow ups have not been any where as clear. Still happy with them, but I've set myself a real standard to maintain now though I think I got more plantetary detail on this one.

This is probably the best of the rest since.

And thanks again Steve. I used Virtual Dub on this avi after processing it the first time and wasn't happy with it. Made quite a difference. I wasn't sure how it would go as I was fairly savage with the culling of images from the original avi. I might go back to the first one I took and posted and see if I can cull a bit out of it too and improve it.

[bird (Anthony Wesley)]

Some nice work happening here. I like the greyscale image 1ponders posted the best.

Bird

[ving (David)]

yeah, greyscale often brings out a bit more

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

thanks guys. Its postive feedback like this that helps to spur me on (Oh and this great hobby ), and I don't think I'm alone feeling that way.