A Galaxy from Video - NGC 253

[2020BC (Bill Christie)]

Bored due to excess Moonage last night. I put the Mintron video camera into the SN-8 at prime focus and let it store video into the camcorder for half an hour. Here's the result. Focus and polar alignment was rough and I didn't capture enough dark frames to reduce noise, but it's not bad for a moony night. A fair bit of detail shows through - more detail than I can get with my DSLR at the moment.

Scope: Unguided LXD-75 SN-8" Astronomik CLS filter
Camera: Mintron 13V1C-Ex
Exposure: 650 frames (x128 integration) = 27 Mins approx. AGC Manual Max. Gamma 0.45.
Process: Recorded to a Camcorder then captured and stacked in a PC by Astrovideo. Curved, masked and unsharp masked in Photoshop.

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

Hey! that is great Bill. Who woulda thunk it from a video Congrats

[janoskiss (Steve H)]

That is brilliant!

[2020BC (Bill Christie)]

Cheers. Thanks. The thing I like about video is that tracking and guiding matter much less. It's also nice to see stuff real-time on the TV. It's a shame that the little camera only integrates at 2.54 seconds. I've had so much value for money from this little camera. It cost about $400 and I use it for just about everything. It does planetary imaging. It is great on the Moon. It is my autoguider, finder scope, the works. That's why I was a little peeved when the Bintel tube extender fell out of my Orion 80ED last night while imaging the moon. It bashed the camera into the concrete from about half a metre height. No problem, the case is steel. Just picked it up, dusted it off, and put it back in again. No worries. Great little camera.

[spearo (Frank)]

nice work indeed, and from video!
the galaxy looks very nice
well done
frank

[Striker (Tony)]

That is terrific work Bill.

Amazing using video capture.

[mick pinner]

Bill not sure if l've asked this before but does your camera download through usb as well as av?

[2020BC (Bill Christie)]

Originally Posted by mick pinner

Bill not sure if l've asked this before but does your camera download through usb as well as av?

The Mintron 13V1C camera's outputs are S-Video and Composite (i.e. "ordinary") video (uses a BNC connector).

When I need to feed it direct to my PC (for autoguiding) I use a video to USB 2.0 adapter (that I bought from Jaycar [or was it Dick Smith?] for around $90). This works very well.

[Octane (Humayun)]

Bill,

That is totally fantastic! Well done.

Regards,
Humayun

[Ric]

That's a great shot Bill.
There's a lot of detail as well

great stuff

[ballaratdragons (Ken)]

I hope you don't mind Bill, but I ran your pic through Photoshop and did a bit of work, then I got rid of the Star Black-eyes in 'Loreal'.

You captured a mighty fine pic there

[2020BC (Bill Christie)]

Originally Posted by ballaratdragons

I hope you don't mind Bill, but I ran your pic through Photoshop and did a bit of work, then I got rid of the Star Black-eyes in 'Loreal'.

You captured a mighty fine pic there

What's Loreal?