Posts Made By: Gianluca Valentini

Hello Mike,
great idea! I'll be on the same plane Paolo will take 8)

I've been dreaming of the same thing, and I also found my spot in South Africa. Maybe one day. However, if you really decide to do it, let us know: you never know you may find a couple of investors willing to participate!

Ciao Mike and welcome back.

Luca 8)

PS I'm also "uncomfortable" 8O with heights!

Truly amazing considering the small no. of frames stacked.
It must have been a heavy blow having to crank that fps down

Speaking of fps, I have a question: do you experience any loss of images when shooting and 60fps? I have a pretty powerful laptop, but I have a hard time keeping up at 30fps and I experience invariably a good 15 to 20% lost frames.

Thanks for posting it Wes. It is always a pleasure to see you at work.

Luca

Hey Jim,

where will you be in Italy?
Great set of pics man!

Ciao
Luca 8)

PS if you need anything, don't hesitate to ask: If I can I'd be happy to be of assistance.

Once again Paul, welcome in the Lum club

I hope the god of astronomy lets you enjoy your newest toy

Ciao
Luca 8)

I could not find the image you mention Paul

But congrats to Wes anyway

Ciao

Luca

Alright Paul ! Great picture: it makes me wonder what you'll show us when you unwrap that Lumy you got there.
However, I was reading that you are waiting for a more powerful pc to start imaging: FORGET ABOUT IT MAN! With your diameter the conditions will never be that good that will allow to overflow the USB 2.0. So, IMHO, you can try even with what you have and the fun is anyhow guaranteed.

Ciao Paul

Luca

Hello Jim,

sorry I did not know you were going to meet Paolo: I would have joined with pleasure.

However, I had all sorts of problems with Registax and Iris and the avis translated from .seq into Streampix. I found out that the only way to process those files is to re-pass them into virtualdub which is a very simple freeware that you can download from the net and then just open the avi exported from streampix and re-save it as avi again: don't ask me why it works, but I can assure you it does. As soon as the fit export will work then Iris will be the way to go 8)

Ciao Jim

Luca

Not to worry Paul: been there, done that

It takes a little while getting used to the new camera (lots of new and unknown "thingys" to keep under control ).

However, I must admit I am a little puzzled about the framerate you use: It seems to me a bit high for you aperture and f ratio. I have an 11" and all my images were captured at 15/22 fps (the second higher value refers to the increased rate when ROI is activated) and I find that value OK (I work at appprox. F30). I use higher framerates only while focusing, but even then I never exceed the 30fps limit: there is simply not enough light gathered to afford such a fast shutter speed. The effect of this is that you are then forced to push on the gain in order to have the 220 ADU needed to have a properly exposed frame and this increases the overall noise in the final image.

Wes uses a 60fps but he has an 18" to collect photons 8) . Even Paolo uses 30fps sometimes, but his monochrome camera is way more sensitive than our "bayerized" models.

So, I would advice to try to film at lower framerates to see what comes out. Just my opinion, of course.

Ciao Paul

Luca

Hello Brian,

your pictures are difficult to see as they are too dark and much of the planet disappears (only in the F20 shot posted at 10:40 PM I can see the whole planet). You may want to increase brightness in you images and if that doesn't do it, then I'm afraid you have to tweak your capturing parameters in order to record a brighter image.

Ciao Brian
Luca

Welcome Richard! May I add: what an introduction!

You were working at F50 8O

Ciao
Luca