Posts Made By: Guy Earle

This is my first time imaging with a webcam (technically first image was the night before, but brief with clouds). I have a 16" modified Discovery dob, and use a cheap 1.3meg Radio Shack Gigaware webcam. I had a Toucam, but got my own new laptop (used my work) and it has Vista. So, the Toucam was out, and I have been shopping for a new webcam, even thinking of taking apart a Logitech Notebook Pro into a project box. I ran across the Radio Shack and decided to give it a whirl, and it's honestly not bad.

The composite below is taking avi.'s as Jupiter goes across the field, and stacking what I can to get these images. All tips and tricks are appreciated.

All suggestions are appreciated. I'm using either the webcam on the 640X480 setting, zoomed, or in 1280X1024 setting, unzoomed. I use Registax and then adjust the noise and sharpness with Photoshop or Paint.net.





I'm having a bit of trouble getting sharp focus....b/c I don't have an IR filter? I don't know...







And all of them in this miserable weather...

My wife thought I was nuts to pull the scope out after a torrential rainstorm. I was trying to image Io's shadow, but I was too late. In any event, the air didn't stabilize for another two hours.

Taken at 1280 X 1024 resolution, drifting across the field.



I took this one at 640 X 480, zoomed. I can't zoom the 1280 X 1024, only the 640...



I was fooling with all the settings in Paint.net and inverted the colors, and was impressed by how much cloud detail I can see. A bit hard on the eyes, but neat to see nonetheless...



Clear Skies,

Guy

Well, after 15 years in this hobby and building a few scopes, I'm finally getting up the nerve to build a truss! I had thought about my old 12.5" f/6 split-tube (made yearssss before I saw any on the market that way...groan)but all the angle calculations and making blocks for the poles made me run the other way. Well, two years ago I sold my 12.5" and with some money given to me by the passing of my grandfather (who liked talking about this hobby) I bought my dream 16" dob (more for a deal on the mirror than anything else). I've told myself for years (as well as my wife has too) that 16" was the maximum I could work with comfortably. I got the Discovery split-tube dob (always been a dob man), and really didn't have any problems with it until recently. I mean, it did BARELY fit in my CRV, and I could JUST lift it out of the cradle, but hey...I'm....young. Well, I tried two days ago and I about killed myself and the OTA slipped/fell out of my hands back down into the rocker box! That's it....it's time.

Well, my question is this...is there any advice that you can give me? I bought Moonlight poles and double ball joint blocks to ease my angle issue/nerves. I ordered two new pieces of sonotube for the upper and lower assembly (as a safety issue instead of cutting up the existing tube). I'm not a fan of the traditional cage and box design for a truss, and like the sonotube/truss/rockerbox combo, kind of like the Meade Lightbridge. I don't have a router, so I know a furniture maker who is making me four endrings so I can attach the hardware. Unfortunately, I'm one of those builders that eyeballs alot, and I'm taking a gamble on where I think the balance point will be. Nicely enough, the Discovery altitude bearings are on a metal slip sleeve for adjustment, so I can nicely tuck a 5 lb weight behind the bearing out of sight. My upper "cage" is 17" long, with 3 ft. of pole, and 21" on the lower mirror housing. I'm going to re-cut the rocker box once I put everything in the OTA and find the balance point. I've attached an image of the scope as it currently is so you can see the beast I'm working with.

All advice and tips are most welcome!

Thanks,

guy

The weather has been just crud here in Tampa the past week (the day I got my IR filter, go figure :S ) The first image is a bit blurry, b/c I literally pulled the scope out and shot. The second was about 20 minutes later, and the mirror had cooled a bit. Less than ten minutes later the sky closed in. I guess I was lucky with what I got!

I was hoping that I could use my 2X Big Barlow on the webcam, but the image degraded too far and actually lost sharpness. But from experimenting, it seems like the two best resolutions I can get are:

1280X1024, 121 frames taken at 23:29est



compared to 640X480, medium zoom, 41 frames taken at 23:21



The IR filter does help, even though it's a reflector. It tends to smooth out the image and give me just a hint more sharpness I believe. I always feel I'm just a bitttttt short, like my focus is a hair off. I laser collimate and try and zoom the image as much as possible to fine focus, then back off to capture. This is a real pain without a drive, and I've already been dropping hints to the wife that after I'm done rebuilding this monster to a truss, there might be an EQ platform or drive in the future. LOL I think if I was truly able to reduce the frame rate (15fps) down a touch with the advantage of guiding, I could make this mirror show it's stuff. For now, I take my short avi's as Jupiter just floatsssss on by. You guys got any hints to bring out more in the image?

Oh, and try out Paint.net, a freeware from download.com. It really is a nice program, and I prefer it over Photoshop even. Tell me what you think.

Clear Skies,

Guy

LOL, I figured, hey, I do own a dob....so when Jupiter was near the edge of the field, I began to gently push the scope to keep Jupiter in the field. Not the slickest way to do it, but it made my frames jump from ~50 at max zoom to 700-900!!! When all else fails, shove the darn thing!



Here is an earlier shot, without my...extra guiding. I'll try that at 1280 the next chance. I was so excited about the 640X zoomed I completely forgot about the 1280.

I was wondering what is the typical process that everyone uses for Registax. You really can squeeze every ounce of an image for detail. Here's what I do, so the advanced users, please let me know if you know a better way.

1. Set the image to Colour and LGRB, View Full Image
2. Use Gradient (not sure why really), Lowest Quality at ~50%, and Pixel area as 2048
3. Take off the trashy first frames (too bright, as chip adjusts) and any at the end.
4. Align the box just around the planet and Align
5. Adjust the #6 of wavelets about 1/2 way, tinker with #2 and bit of #5.
6. Resize the image 150-200%

Then I use Paint.net

1. Crop the image
2. Adjust Saturation slightly up
3. Go about 1/2 way up for sharpness
4. Put the Noise all the way down.
5. Rotate if needed

Thanks for any advice up front,

Guy

Last night didn't turn out quite like I was hoping. For one, I didn't notice that the laptop was running low on drive space, and I think that was giving my 1280 resolution a choppy real-time image on my screen (although as it turns out it was okay processed). However, I've run into this problem a few times: when the file gets large enough (over 1 gig) I get a ".avi failed to decompress" message in Registax. Can it not handle files that large?

This question raises another for me concerning framerate. Tutorials all over the net say that 5-10 fps is the recommendation, but isn't that for USB 1 lines? My laptop is fairly new, and both the camera and it have USB 2 standards. I put my fps at 20 most times, but have even gone up to 23 and as low as 5 fps, but I can't see a difference (for individual frames). The only reason I try and push the fps is b/c of lack of guiding. About half of my .avi files last night have failed to process b/c of this error.

I think this is the best from last night from the .avi's I was able to save. You can see a difference between the shadow and Callisto, but I don't know if I'm over analyzing by seeing the left limb having detail. I can't wait to see what you guys did with this image tonight!



Here is the same image, same time, in Celestia.

I finally had a decent night on the 7th to take some snapshots. I fooled around with a couple shots this time last month, but I spent more time learning how to shoot Jupiter than the Moon. So, this in a way is my first attempt to shoot good pics. I didn't label any data on these pics yet, and wanted to post them to see what you all think. The first is simply a shot with my inexpensive Kodak 6.1mp camera through a 24.5mm Meade SWA. I have a 16" f/4.5. The other shots are at 640X480, zoomed, taken as avi. with Craterlet, and processed in Registax and Paint.net. The zoomed look somewhat blurry (no guide capable), and am trying to ponder my way to a better pic...