I am currently borrowing a Phillips TouCam and a 120mm x 600mm rich field refractor on an EQ3 mount, given this is my first opportunity to use this kind of equipment it was time to experiment.
My 12 year old daughter has shown an interest in astronomy and decided to come out into the backyard with Dad and give it a go. After showing her the basic camera controls on K3CCDTools (v1) and placing Saturn in the field of view (with a 2x Barlow) she proceeded to play with various shutter and gain settings capturing approximately 60 seconds worth of video at a time (at 5fps). We also tried a few different filters (Celestron Yellow, Red & Blue).
After the various captures it was time to process. Inside on the computer run RegiStax (v4) and show her the basics of what the various buttons & sliders do after that do what you like and see what you can draw out.
Attached are the results. The images were captured last night (i.e. very bright Moon) with ordinary seeing (around 5/10) and are generally the sum of between 250 and 300 frames.
She was very pleased with her handy work and wanted to show her Mum and siblings plus her friends at school. Perhaps another budding astrophotographer is born? Still aways from the amazing shots that people regularly post here
I am bemused by the relative simplicity of capturing an image and also the fact that you reduce large AVI files down to a <10kB final product
I'll need to buy more hard-disk space anyway.
Looking forward to capturing a Jupiter image with her and perhaps a few brighter clusters when the Moon retreats. Can easily capture the two bright components of Acrux so maybe a web-cam doubles collection...
