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[APODman]

My first "great" astrophotography image !

I took a picture of Jupiter on the evening of July 31, though still light years far from great amateur astrophotographers this is a dream that I wanted to accomplish since I was 12 years old when I started getting interested in astronomy.

The image was taken with a 80mm f/11 refractor using a Philips SPC900NC webcam mounted on a 3x barlow. The final image was obtained after stacking 250 frames in Registax software.

[atomic7732]

Awesome. With out the Northern band and with a little lightening you could make it Saturn. lol

[Chaotic Cow]

Wow! I am jealous.

[infringement153]

Where do you live?

Downtown San Diego, so a telescope wouldn't be worth it for me here 

[APODman]

Where do you live?

Downtown San Diego, so a telescope wouldn't be worth it for me here 

Do not be discouraged !

I live in São Paulo (Brazil), a megalopolis with 20 million inhabitants. From my house I can only see stars, with naked eye, with magnitude 3 given the extreme light pollution. To make matters worse I live in a neighborhood consisting primarily of high standard buildings full iluminated and about 5 km from a major airport in São Paulo !

The light pollution here is absurd!

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[APODman]

A very interesting solution to urban areas is a lighted Mallincam.

This camera has high light sensitivity and rapid integration of images so that even in strongly lit areas we can take splendid images of deep sky objects that even in dark areas with a medium-sized telescope could't discriminate the details. The sensitivity is so high that even nebulae can be recorded during broad daylight!

M57 at daylight !


Here more examples of deep sky objetcs registered at a high illuminated urban area ( Downtown OTTAWA, Canadá ):

- http://www.zaplive.tv/web/mallincam?streamId=mallincam%2Fbfe75f24-b45b-4550-9a6b-480cf59e49c1

Official website of Mallincam:

- http://mallincam.tripod.com/

I intend to buy one later this year.  

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[APODman]

Further attempts to photograph Jupiter resulted in considerable improvements, especially given my new Barlow of 2.5x triplet of manufacturer GSO .

Finally managed to register the Great Red Spot and many other details, in particular two big white ovals at NEB.

[atomic7732]

So what you must have a laptop to connect the webcam, right? And how do you mount it to be stable?

I know of a nice $99 eyepiece cam that just goes right into the eyepiece area, and you just hook it up to a computer. Sucks I don't have the money or the computer to do that... It's over 50 feet from where my telescope is.

Well I got my photometer a few days ago (they're over $500), and I got it for $9.99 from a trusted buyer who knew nothing about it. I get to mess with it, and hopefully I can make a BIG profit on it. Or just keep it cause I may never come across one again.

[APODman]

So what you must have a laptop to connect the webcam, right? And how do you mount it to be stable?

I know of a nice $99 eyepiece cam that just goes right into the eyepiece area, and you just hook it up to a computer. Sucks I don't have the money or the computer to do that... It's over 50 feet from where my telescope is.

Hi Neutron, sorry by delay the response.

There are adapters for the camera so that you can engage it directly to a telescope or a barlow:



More here:
- http://azmirul.wordpress.com/tag/philip-spc900nc-webcam/

Well I got my photometer a few days ago (they're over $500), and I got it for $9.99 from a trusted buyer who knew nothing about it. I get to mess with it, and hopefully I can make a BIG profit on it. Or just keep it cause I may never come across one again.

Wow ! Great deal !!



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[APODman]

Upgrading: attached are there the last picture of Saturn that I got some time ago !

And keep an eye on EBAY, there are always good deals there, even with modified SPC900NC cameras for long exposure (for deep sky astrophotography)

Like this ( I recommend this seller, I bought mine from  him ):
http://cgi.ebay.com/Astrophotography-Astro-CCD-SPC900NC-Long-Exposure-USB-/220763801740?pt=UK_Photography_Telescopes&hash=item33668c488c


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[Bla]

That looks amazing, especially as your avatar. When sized down it looks less blurry and gives a perception of it having much better details, I think.

[APODman]

That looks amazing, especially as your avatar. When sized down it looks less blurry and gives a perception of it having much better details, I think.

Yeap, I agree !

I pushed a little beyond the treatment image through software Registax. I had not focused Saturn properly and tried to compensate by increasing the details through the software, but otherwise the picture was grainy.


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[atomic7732]

Woah cool picture!

[APODman]

Something you can do with a webcam SPC900NC is the record of star's spectrum. I've been trying to do this record with a spectroscopic filter done at home.

The first test I did was with the star Arcturus, down the "pure" spectrum as obtained by the camera and then the spectrum treated with the software Vspec to enable the identification of some chemical elements responsible for some of the lines of the absorption lines.

[APODman]

And here, video1 a compilation of meteors captured by my camera WATEC 902h2 ULTIMATE and the software UFOCapture ( I recomend to show the video with the resolution of "480p" to observe more details ).

Image of the one of the meteors of the vídeo ( above the building):


-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdH2DTj_TJo

In the video 2, just above the point that divides the count of seconds of milliseconds, can be observed four little Sprites in sequence captured by chance around 0:03 seconds of movie.

-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKbWTzOMW3M

More about Sprites here:
- http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/1999/essd10jun99_1/
- http://inphobe.blogspot.com/2009/06/sprite-spirits-of-another-sort.html
- http://www.backyardastronomy.net/TLE.html

[atomic7732]

That's pretty cool. I like the meteors. Was there some kind of meteor shower? Also, how do you have the camera set up all (or at least most) of the time? I want to do something like that. That'd be cool.

[APODman]

That's pretty cool. I like the meteors. Was there some kind of meteor shower? Also, how do you have the camera set up all (or at least most) of the time? I want to do something like that. That'd be cool.

In this video I'm trying  to capture some meteors of Lyrids shower, but that's not the shower's maximum day and all captured meteors are random ( but cool ) meteors at common night in a high illuminated urban night sky.

The camera used is specific: "WATEC 902h2 Ultimate". It´s apropriated cause it´s fast, have little noise and have great low lux sensibility ( it can capture images even with 0.000033 lux ! ).

But to capture the meteors I use the software UFOCapture. It´s a motion capture software designed to capture very fast and transient eventswidely , cause this it´s widely used for meteors and transient atmospheric phenomena like sprites, lightings, and others ( but I also see it being used to register star occultation by asteroids and meteorite lunar impacts ).

I'm go sleep and when one meteor cross the camera field the software capture it ! In the next day I saw what was captured.

But UFOcapture not only capture the meteors, it can be used to says how is the altitude, direction, velocity, and at last trace the orbit of the object :



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[atomic7732]

The orbit? That's cool, but then you'd have to either use a GPS to orient it, or manually input everything yourself? So you have to hook up the webcam to the computer? I could maybe face the webcam out my window... That might work. lol

I also see a star overlay kind of? If it sees stars it can orient itself that way?

Edit: I see the program is super expensive, and I assume the camera is too... What exactly would a person look for if they wanted a cheaper camera?

[APODman]

The orbit? That's cool, but then you'd have to either use a GPS to orient it, or manually input everything yourself? So you have to hook up the webcam to the computer? I could maybe face the webcam out my window... That might work. lol

I also see a star overlay kind of? If it sees stars it can orient itself that way?

I insert my latitude, longitude and altitude data, the software uses scintilation masks to determine the velocity, altitude and direction of movement of meteors, you need only to make some manual job. After it you can saw in a map ( of United States for example ) how is the real distance of the meteor to you. If more than one person in two or more localities shot the same meteors you can trace with more precision this location by triangulation. After this you can run another ( free )  software produced by Sonotaco  to determine the orbit of the meteor. But you can determine it only with your observations, with less accuracy, of course.

You can capture meteros and satélites with Webcams too, after my WATEC i use my SPC900NC ( a common one, not modificated that costs only $47 in EBAY ) to do this, but the luminosity sensibility of the webcam is far less than the WATEC so don´t expect got so many meteors. But in the northern hemisphere you are more lucky than us in Brazil cause great showers like Perseids, Leonids ou Geminds are favorable for you and it costume produce bright meteors and even fireballs !

Edit: I see the program is super expensive, and I assume the camera is too... What exactly would a person look for if they wanted a cheaper camera?

Yes UFOCapture are far expensive, one alternative are the far less expensive software Handyavi, but it´s not so sofisticated.

About the cameras, you can use the SPC900NC, as I said earlier, but if you want play for real you will need more sensitives cameras like mine or some more cheaper options:

1) KPC-350BH - it´s a good camera for this work and costs only $76 ( against $287 of WATEC Ultimate )
- http://france.allsky.camera.free.fr/test-camera-en.html
- http://dragonneo.net/~bigcountrywx/meteorcamabout.php

2) You will need a luminous auto iris lens like Fujinon YV2.7X2.9LA-2 2.9-8mm

3) You will need a analog to digital conversor, I have a Canopus ADVC55. Note that not all video capture board or analog to digital conversor are compatible with UFOCapture but you can try less expensives USB2.0 capture device, but I don´t know if it's compatible with UFOCapture.

4) And you will need some firewire board

At all you will you will spend $279.95 with all equipament.

In EBAY you can found a seller that sells WATEC 902H ( not the "Ultimate" but better than KPC ) for $89.95.


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[atomic7732]

Someday when I have the money. Where do you have your camera set up? And how do you get it to your computer? I don't know much about any of this hardware needed. Thanks for explaining all this.  

[APODman]

Someday when I have the money. Where do you have your camera set up? And how do you get it to your computer? I don't know much about any of this hardware needed. Thanks for explaining all this.  

Connect a SPC900NC to computer is nothing special, is a common USB connection.

But to capture and process the astronomical images you need to use some softwares ( almost all free ) .

- wxAstrocapture: it´s a basic tool, through it you capture a movie of the astronomical object, as the video below, from which the original image of Saturn that I posted was processed ( note that I'm not using any kind of guidance, I just let Saturn run in the screen):

( the quality of the original vídeo are far, far, far better, Youtube compressed the movie when I upload it )
>

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrxrKcqsdxw

- Registax: Here you process the movie captured, it´s a little tricky but exist many tutorials to show how to use it, some examples:

- http://www.backyardvoyager.com/registax1.html
- http://www.russsscope.net/staxtutorial.htm
- http://www.astronomie.be/registax/bobspages.html
-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qb5m44TaxzQ

To capture meteors is even more simple, connect the camera to computer and open the UFOCapture than click in Detect ( ok, exist some more settings that need to be configure in software to increase sensibility, reduce false captures like camera noise, airplanes, and others. But read the manual and you will quickly understand ) 

That's it !

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[atomic7732]

I glanced at the manual, I understand it. Not to seem like I'm bothering you alot, but you aren't exactly telling me what I am asking to know, maybe I need to be more precise. Don't worry, what you are saying isn't going to waste, it's useful info that I would have probably asked later.

I was asking, where is your camera relative to your computer? Is it like, outside and wired through a wall to your computer? What computer are you using, a laptop that you move around, or a computer that stays in one spot? How far is the camera from said computer? I'm asking about YOUR setup, because we only have one computer at this house, and it's a PC, so it stays in one spot. I'm wondering where I should place my camera, and how far I can put it.

Also, what do some of the things you told me to get do? What is a firewire board anyway? What would I do with it? And what's the difference of a USB2.0 converter and the A/D converter that is more expensive?

[APODman]

I was asking, where is your camera relative to your computer? Is it like, outside and wired through a wall to your computer? What computer are you using, a laptop that you move around, or a computer that stays in one spot? How far is the camera from said computer? I'm asking about YOUR setup, because we only have one computer at this house, and it's a PC, so it stays in one spot. I'm wondering where I should place my camera, and how far I can put it.

both in the case of WATEC camera or SPC900NC I'm using a PC. To meteor register laptops are not indicated to this kind of observation. I have only one PC and I put it in a covered area only with the camera, and cables to the camera, outside.

In the case of WATEC I have one cable firewire to connect the conversor Canopus to a firewire board in computer and other cable RCA to connect the conversor to the camera, that have a BNC/RCA adapter. Every cable have 1,80m of extension so I can fix the camera ( in a photographic tripod ) at a considerable distance of PC.

In the case of SPC900NC I have 2m USB cable connect it directly from telescope to the computer .

The configuration of my PC are:
Core2Duo 2,66MHZ / 2 gb ram/ Video board NVIDIA Geforce 8600 GT/ two HD SATA2 7200RPM (fast HD are indicate) of 300gb each, 150gb are reserved to UFOCapture save the videos. Every video have 90mb in average but it´s common videos with more 1gb, so you need space.

Also, what do some of the things you told me to get do? What is a firewire board anyway? What would I do with it? And what's the difference of a USB2.0 converter and the A/D converter that is more expensive?

Firewire it´s a tecnologie of input/output data at high speed required in this case because the high speed of receiving and recording data given the speed of the event ( meteors, Sprites, and others transient astronomical or atmospherical fenomena ).

The USB converter generally does not provide a picture so clear as the Canopus cause it produces more noise which means that we should decrease the sensitivity of UFOCapture that does not understand any noise in the image as a meteor, for example. As a result we capture less meteors than an apparatus that produces less noise as the Canopus.

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