Jupiter, It Moons Us!

Following an unfortunate accident recently involving a falling camera, our latest astrocam candidate, an Ixus 125, arrived in the mail the other day. Great little camera, it shoots full 1080 video making it a hopefully-ideal planetary and moon shooter.

Sadly, no port of CHDK yet, though work seems to be in progress on that. Fingers crossed we'll be able to get RAW out of it soon. A trip to the local hardware store and much experimenting with the camera and an eyepiece in store ("Can I help you find something?" " No, I don't know what I'm looking for") resulted in the acquiring of an odd looking piece of plumbing hardware. A quick hacksaw and much sanding and filing later, and I had an adaptor that takes a GSO 1.25" eyepiece on one end, and slips fairly tightly over the Ixus on the other. Et voila, the birth of astrocam 3 (or is it 4? what are we up to valHallen?).

The bush fires in Aussie were casting a pall across the sky last night, so seeing wasn't the best. Unfortunately it also clouded up around the horizon denying us what would have been a spectacular sunset, if the brief glimpses of a blood-red sun an hour before it hit the horizon were anything to go by. I pointed valHallen's scope at the Moon and then Jupiter once the sun was sufficiently in hiding, and was quite stunned at the details on the camera screen. I shot a few movies and fed one of them to Registax, and below is the resulting shot of Jupiter with (L to R) Ganymede, Europa and Io in tow through the 15mm GSO 1.25". Registax is quite daunting to the newcomer, so I'm sure we can do better with some practice, better focus, and better seeing! Very happy with the result though. Click the link below for Flickr, as usual.

Jupiter and Moons

6mm moon

Ok, lots of montaging going on over here .. will be better when I get the WHOLE of the moon I guess .. stupid clouds.

But anyways ... here's the latest WIP at Flickr ...

For those of you who are interested ... each tile is 1956x1623 pixels and there are 92 of them so far, full image is 17500px on a side (at this point).   The file is 1.19 Gb with each tile around 1-2 Mb.  The tiles are all RGB at this stage and the only post that's been done is cropping as I have a bit of crap on my CCD :(  So there's still chromatic aberration in there.

However. I don't have ALL of the moon, as this is my first try, so I will probably get back out there tonight and get some more - weather permitting of course. (sorry hon).

This still not the finished item .. call it a WIP or proof of concept.  I love my 6mm :D

Just for the comparison ....

Here's another shot of the moon, this time taken with the 20D using Bill's long lens (300mm Zoom) it's for comparison to the other moon shots I posted this morning.

So that makes it 1/4 the focal length of the telescope .. even though that is kinda generous, because I use the IXUS 3x optical for the scope, and don't have the knowledge of optics to work out what that does to the focal length.

This hiatus has really shown me that I need some things to take this hobby further ... Scotch Mount for a start, then motor, then the rest ... there's even a very nice new point and shoot out from Canon that looks like to be perfect for the afocal stuff.

So the equation goes like this.  I love the stars. I want to take pics of them and all manner of other celestial things. For this I need Gear. For Gear I need Money. For Money I need a Job.  For Job I need a Showreel.  For Showreel I need time.

*sigh*

The Death of AstroCam 1.0

Well.  I just reviewed the footage I shot last night, then hit the delete button on all of it.  Even at 1600x1200 Jupiter through the 25mm Lens is about 100 pixels square.  This wasn't the major problem, the thing that has caused me to lay AstroCam1 to rest is that I would be getting 1, maybe 2 frames in focus per 5 second video, then the camera would just lose it.  I got some frames that showed the bands, were in reasonable focus, and Jupiter wasn't just a big bright lens flare, but that's just it, 1 or 2 frames per video.

The 640x480 video shot on the Lumix came out much better - still a bit bright, and Jupiter is blown out to all hell, but it was all shot through the 9mm lens, so I have way more pixels to work with and I am starting to get a real handle on how to shoot with the Lumix.

I went out and got AstroCam V2 this morning - cheaper, lower resolution and non auto focus - Logitech Quickcam for notebooks - expect a post on the disassembly and preparation soon.

So, things I learned:
Autofocus is evil
25mm Lens is too wide a fov for good webcam video
Set Lumix to Macro
ISO 80/100 gives best results for detail, even if the moons disappear

No pictures yet this morning, about to stack some now

Oh what a weekend!

Bill, you're a wonder, thank you so much for the loan of the laptop.  Got no results to show you however - basically the camera I got is too "bells and whistles" to give me the shots I want.  No matter what I do to the settings, the autofocus and autoexposure stays on, so after about 15 seconds, the planet fades out of focus ... incredibly frustrating, let me tell ya!

I got some footage last nght and was just setting up for tonight when, and I swear this is true, the sky clouded  over and began raining inside 15 minutes ... it's still raining now

So not good results for the Quest, however I have not given up!  I will try again with this webcam, Also with another, older one that I have ... and by the steel flesh of Ormagöden I will succeed!!

The Kit - AstroPhotography on a Budget

Morning all.  I am awake very early and the sky is very clear, unfortunately that huge sphere of hydrogen fusion reactions is up and washing out all the stars.  Here's hoping that tonight the sky is as clear.  If not tonight, I will settle for tomorrow, as I'm not greedy :)

So this morning I was looking through the stuff I take observing and decided to make it all into a bit of a kit, as this quest is starting to get serious now, and I find myself with a fair bit of stuff.

For those of you that arn't familiar with my situation, I am using an 8-inch (200mm) dobsonian mount reflector.  Nice, portable starter's scope, which I bought from the lovely people at AstroNZ.  It's not motorised in any way and I have 9mm and 25mm SuperPlossl lenses for it.

My stated quest is taking kick-ass digital photos of near-earth objects, on an extremely low budget.  So here's the kit I have put together to achieve this, plus a wishlist :) Click to enlarge and read labels :)

So the things not here are the Panasonic Lumix Camera - 8.1 MegaPixel Compact Digital Camera. And the scope itself.

Now the things I think I need - Laptop with USB2 for AstroCam, more gaffertape, more batteries and a thermos for coffee :) Oh and possibly an assistant!

Basically this allows me to get everything from star-trail shots to planetary closeups (as long as that planet is the moon).. if I can only sort out the focusing :D  All up, the cost of all this is under $400, a lot of it is stuff I found in the garage.  The most expensive items are the Lumix - $200 and AstroCam V1 - $100.

OOOO!

Just awoken from my Nana-Nap and the sky is beautifully clear!!  Time to move the PC outside :D More as it happens :)  Just waiting for Jupiter to rise high enough to be in range of my limited USB cabling ... I really need a laptop!!

Waiting waiting ... Jupiter moves damn slowly, unless of course I am trying to focus on it :)  I love this stuff.

Stayed clear, but I ran out of time .. so maybe tomorrow

*grumble*

Small Star Party

Well tonight I saw Karen and Martin come round as we tried to sort this camera out.and in a lot of ways, we did sort the camera out, except for the capturing of in focus video :(  Once more it seems auto-focus is my enemy, oh how I hate it!  Still all is not lost, the MacGuyver'd webcam from hell works, looks through scope, captures pics, is all good apart form the one little focussing issue .. which I will solve if it kills me.  The circuit board for the camera is mounted on the (green) lid of an old 35mm film canister, which was then snapped back onto the canister, and gaffer taped to the super-plossl metal body, with eyepiece removed.  It actually worked, apart form the afore-mentioned auto focus.

Many many thanks to Martin for his amazing gaffer-tape engineering skills and Karen for being the Lady of the Light and also being awesomely enthusiastic and patient at us guys rigging stuff.  Highlight of the evening was rigging up a rockband powered usb hub to boost the camera signal through about 4 or 5 usb extensions ...

Addendum
Ok, I think I may have a solution .. I taped the camera onto the eyepiece, and although I had to guess focus (no laptop - all donations welcome!) it seemed to work a lot better ... I now have some video of Jupiter moving across my FOV .. with 4 moons visible  right now it's 668 million kms away too! ... So all is not lost I say, and now, bed

The Quest is alive and well

Well after a truly awesome day firing arrows at my garage, and playing a bit of RockBand with my homies, I also found time to start the Great Webcam Project,  As my stated goal is to get the most awesome shots of near-earth objects as I can, even though common wisdom says I should save that for my 2nd or 3rd telescope - the one with the GOTO system and the mount worth as much as a good car.

Well I don't have that yet, so I am having a great time trying to make the equipment I have got do the trick.  So yesterday I bought a webcam from Dick Smiths, this one to be precise:

I bought this model because it has a 2 Megapixel CCD.  This means that I can get 10fps video at 1600x1200.  Which is pretty nice as far as these things go.  So this afternoon, I disassembled it.

Fearing the worst, as this model has the dreaded auto focus, which I am still blaming for the bad quality of my shots.  To my delight and surprise, when I plugged the (disassembled)  cam in and installed the software that came with it, I found that the software allows you to control anything you want, you can switch the autofocus off and focus the cam yourself, not to mention white balance and ALL that other good stuff you can't access on my Lumix.  So I am just about to take the whole kit and kaboodle out to the garage and see if I can make a mount to get it in the Prime focus of the telescope ... with luck from the clouds there should be something shot tonight!  Wish me luck!