Posts Made By: Gary Carter

The beautiful thing about Saturn, is Saturn's a beautiful thing!
His globe is engulfed in the gases, and embraced by the wonderous rings!
He's legend-ary, planet-ary fun, fun-fun, fun-fun!
And the most beautiful thing about Saturn is...He's the only one! Heeee's the only one!!!

October 15, 2003 6:19 a.m. Central
Celestron Ultima 11, Televue 4X Powermate (F40), ToUcam Pro, Baader UV-IR Cut Filter
K3CCD Tools to Capture avi data @10fps, 1/33sec shutter speed. Registax to process images.
Cool, clear, calm morning.
Saturn was almost overhead. I managed to capture a very calm 90 second period. Best 350 or so frames of 450.

I have plans to attend the Texas Star Party this year and have offered to present a paper on webcam imaging for one of the afternoon sessions. These are brief 20-30 minute presentations. My objective is to foster interest and encourage others in participating this aspect of the hobby.

I'm drafting a proposed outline and while I am proud of my own accomplishments both in understanding the theory and applying the knowledge in practice, I also know there are many more accomplished folks posting here and on other similar forums.

What I would like to ask is (1) permission to use a few of the examples submitted here in the presentation, and (2) if you will oblige, also to gather your collective knowledge on the equipment chosen/used, camera settings and tips/techniques in the use of the software applications used to capture and process your images (i.e. K3CCD tools, Registax, Photoshop, etc.) All contributors would of course be credited. The completed presentation would be provided to all interested parties.

If you are interested in submitting example images and/or collaborating with me on this project in any way I would like to exchange contact information so I can send you the proposed outline/format and get your thoughts on the subject matter. I can be reached at garycarterciitxnet

A very calm night with steady skies! Makes for an enjoyable imaging session....
Captured with K3CCD Tools, 600 Frames Processed in Registax 2

I've spent a number of nights mulling over the same questions on various optical configurations. As many here will tell you, it all varies by the optical configuration used and experimentation is always the best means of proving it all out. Still, I think much can be learned from others successes (or failures)! Here's my 2 cents worth of experimental results from last night:

Skys were reasonably steady and I spent nearly three hours playing with the same mix of gamma, saturation, brightness and gain while imaging Jupiter with a C11 and a 4x Powermate. The 4x on a C11 using a ToUcam should be a reasonable match, matematically speaking. Though I captured a fairly good image of Saturn using this configuration with a Baader UV/IR filter, I've had difficulty getting good contrast and color results on Jupiter with it. The relative light level is quite low at this magnification. I found it difficult to reach 140 at the K3CCD meter without pushing the gain such that the noise became noticable. I did have a True-Tech IR block filter in at the time.

Conclusion - I saw similar results you post above with regards to various settings and the effects they have on color, contrast, noise, etc. No matter what combination of settings I tried, I still could not capture a decent, low-noise image of Jupiter. The contrast was low and the color looked washed out.

The only thing I didn't get around to before the clouds rolled in was to remove the True-Tech IR filter - I need to repeat the same experiment with it removed. There is quite a bit of opinion expressed here that it isn't needed for Jupiter.

Past results C11, 2.5x Powermate:

I have had good results imaging Jupiter using a 2.5x Powermate on the C11 without an IR filter using the following camera setup procedure:

Set Shutter speed to 1/25th second
Set white-balance to auto
Saturation set to max
Brightness set to ~40%
Gamma ~20 - 30%
Gain set to ~20% - 30% Gain & Gamma are adjusted to optimize the color and signal-to-noise ratio keeping the K3CCD "Brightness" scale around 140. This seemed to work well when stacking the 600 or so frames.
Uncheck white balance
Frame Rate at 5fps

You may use the whole enchilada - simply insert the nose of LU075 camera into the 2" to 1.25" adapter, run the gain up a bit, and find focus with a bright start in the FOV.

The other adapter you may be reading about, the T-Ring, would be used with camera bodies that have T adapters such as Canon EOS or StarlightXpress.

I recently purchased an Orion ED100 and after a night of evaluation I determined there was a problem. As it happens the spacers between the elements are visible in the FOV. A quick note to Orion's technical support confirms this and they are willing to either have me send it in or, at my option, open it up and move them back in the appropriate position. Being the typical "male-child" I'm not adverse to taking things apart and putting them together again (hopefully) - it's kind of challenging. But this assumes one has the willingness and the proper tools, which brings me to the question....

Where do I find a spanner wrench of the appropriate size to dissasemble the lens assembly?

Sam, the dog whose ugliness earned him TV appearances, limousine rides and even a meeting with millionaire Donald Trump, has died.

http://www.samugliestdog.com/

by Keiko Matsui....my personal favorites are "Dream Walk" and "Deep Blue".
Her DVD "Jazz Channel Presents Keiko Matsui" is also quite good.

....for the APOD of the day!

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/science/04/28/laser.fusion.nif/index.html?hpt=C1