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astrophotography, recommend a cam...

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  • 14-05-2004 1:25am
    #1
    Eye
    Registered Users Posts: 678 ✭✭✭


    hey there, hope someone can help here.

    my brother recently got a new scope and we are eager to get into astrophotography, from various sites and magazines it seems that the most popular camera that people use is the philips toucam pro.

    some images are impressive and others...well not so good, so i'm in two minds as to what cam we should think about, ideally a proper ccd camera would be the best thing but they are way too expensive.

    we've got a pair of nikon f-601's SLR's with the t-rings and adaptors for doing prime focus shots, waiting on a t-ring for my dad's minolta dimage 7i digital SLR cam.

    at the moment we are still messing about having trouble with the tracking and allignment for the scope so once we get over that then the photography can really start.

    what alot of people seem to do is use the phillips toucam pro and go for eye piece projection photography and capture maybe 30 secs of what they want and they use software like registax and k3cddtools and that sort to stack the images and get the best results, is this the best way to go about it and do people think the phillips cam is the best one around for doing that or is there any other good webcams that can be used?

    any and all info greatly appreciated :)


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    #2
    albertw
    Closed Accounts Posts: 395 ✭✭albertw


    If you've just got the scope, take time to get used to it. Your opinions of what you want to do with astrophotography will change!

    Webcams are the easiest to get planetary images from, and tracking isnt important. They can be modified to do longer exposure too if you are into electronic DIY, http://arnholm.org/ for example has some impressive results. He uses a modified toucam for the deepsky photos based on Steve Chalmers modifications, http://www.pmdo.com/wintro.htm . And with this method he has gotten down to magnitude 19.

    Though in light polluted dublin I can image down to 13th mag or so with 10 second exposures with the canon g3 and eyepiece projection. that image is at http://www.cademuir.net/astro/cheapccd.shtml , a very basic & now dated article I wrote on the subject when I strted muching about with it last year.

    You dont have to use webcams with an eyepiece, in fact the most popular way seems to be to use them at prime focus (or afocal, or whatever the correct term is!)

    You might want to browse through http://www.irishastronomy.org/boards/viewforum.php?f=29 , the webcam folks there will no doubt have plenty of advice. There is also a yahoogroup, digitalastro I think, which you can overdose on information with.

    I have an IR blocking filter on order for my webcam, toucam pro, which for some reason is now very sensitive to IR light, which it displays as blue, so the images look really wrong! I think I may have pointed the green laser pointer at it during a starparty a while back, so god knows what damage the green lases did to it. Ah well once it works June 8th!

    Also while we are on the topic, the author of Registax will be holding a workshop at the Whirlpool Star Party in Birr in September. I'll send out more details about that in the coming months as the full speaker lineup is confirmed by the shannonside folks.

    Cheers,
    ~Al


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