Posts Made By: Anthony Wesley

Here's another image from 11 minutes later. Io has moved appreciable!

regards, Anthony

That is a mighty fine image Alan, thanks!

Anthony

Joe Conway said:

I’ve been looking at camera options for about two years now. I want to learn the basics and realize a webcam is a good place to start.

So reading as much as I could I see that Toucams are used by many folks. I’ve read up on the mods for them with respect to long exposure and changing the CCD chip to the Sony ICX098BL black and white chip.

I then looked at the DMK offering that some are using and see the camera also uses the ICX098BL chip. Comments from Alan Friedman would be especially appreciated on this post.

First, I want a cheap camera using this chip. I want to play with the guts and intend on breaking a few of them with cooling. I’m not adverse to buying the Toucam and changing the chip, but the chips themselves appear hard to find off the shelf.

So with this said, anyone have any experience with this item>

http://www.unibrain.com/Products/VisionImg/Fire_i_BC.htm

Only 30fps, but would something like this work? I like the fact it’s OEM out of the box and not too expensive. Thanks, Joe

PS, I especially like this part,

http://www.unibrain.com/Products/VisionImg/Fire_i_BC_remoteCCD.htm

Joe, I used one of these fire-i mono cameras for about 18 months as my main camera, you can see some results in my image gallery. All the 2004 and 2005 images would have been taken with this camera.

It's certainly a low cost camera, but has a few quirks as Oliver and others have mentioned, I'd say you get exactly what you pay for - it's a good low-cost learning camera, but you'll soon want to replace it.

I've evaluated and owned many cameras in the couple of years since then, and one thing that seems consistent is that "you get what you pay for". The best camera you can buy (in my opinion) is the Dragonfly Express from Point Grey Research, and it's also the most expensive.

Other cameras like the DMK21AF04 from TheImagingSource and the Dragonfly2 from PGR are also good cameras, again their cost gives a good indication of what you can expect from them. The DMK is quite limited in its range of modes and formats, so it's the cheapest of the three.

If price is no limit then I don't see how you can do better than a Dragonfly Express at the moment.

regards, Anthony

...next image...

...and image #2

Here is one more image from this session, with more care in the processing I think this is the best image of Jupiter I've managed so far.

regards, Bird

Here's another image from about 20 minutes later...

regards, Anthony

Most excellent image Stefan, well done!

Anthony

Steve Fugardi said:

I recently modified my Toucam 840 to use 900nc firmware. For the first time, I used YUK2 mode with the built-in image enhancer and saturation & contrast set to 100%. After star aligning on Vega, I adjusted my collimation while waiting for Jupiter to clear the trees. My C11 mirror temp was within 1.0degC of ambient. As soon as I noticed Io in the f25 Toucam field of view, I knew I had the "best" conditions this season. Most times I need to overexpose Jupiter to even see the moons. Seeing was average according to the CSC with a slight yellowish haze in the sky. At 1/33sec, the best 200frames were stacked.

After seeing Anthony's absolutely stunning shots, I almost didn't post, however, for me this was a significant improvement. Maybe in a few years with Jupiter higher in altitude, I'll have this figured out...

Regards,
Steve

Steve, still a good image!

It's all about improving your own images - there are too many variables involved to compare with other data, seeing, scope, software etc.

I really look only at my own data to see if I am improving, and that's what really matters.

regards, Anthony

Here is a montage of the best 3 images from this session, enjoy :-)

regards, Anthony