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Galaxy M33

Started by Rocket Pooch, Sep 09, 2004, 09:08:00

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Rocket Pooch

Hi,

After seeing Pauls effort at DSC on M33 I thought I'd have a go.  So on the 29th August I did, and what a difficult tarket it is.

However, its taken me this long to create a flat frame and get the hang of the flat and dark subtraction from the raw images.  This is a stack of 42 of the 80 20 second images I took, I havent done the rest because I'm to lazy.





[ This Message was edited by: csuddell on 2004-09-09 01:25 ]

Greg

...what do you mean lazy - I call it brilliant!! Excellent to see a little bit of competition among our astrophotographers.

Got up this morning at 5.27am to see Mercury. Bloddy trees - there always in the bloody way. Bloody tired now.

Ian

you only got up 10 minutes early Greg? Tut, tut.

One of these nights I'll get out, hopefully. I've still got my solar filter attached to my scope. That means it's not been used since the Transit :sad:

Whitters

Nice one Chris,
Go on get the rest of those images stacked up.

JohnP

Hi Chris - Good image - What are the black shadows near some of the stars - is it alignment or processing issues?

John.

Ian

they look like artifacts of linear sharpening, bit like the "ears" you get from the standard Toucam.

Chris? you been playing or is it the camera?

Rocket Pooch

There a known issue with the SAC8 and the 1004x board where there's no capacitor on the RF out is causes a shadow, presumable because its not tuned in properly :smile:

Ian

are you going to be putting one in then? You can borrow the blowtorch I use for by webcam mods if you like?

Rocket Pooch

No chance, but I will on the new camera.

Ian

new camera? You a SAC shareholder?

JohnP

Hi Ian,

Perhaps I can answer for Chris - We both bought a 1004 security camera a few weeks back & are in the process of trying to destroy them per Jon Groves modification! Hopefully, we will have a B&W camera as sensitive as the SAC but at less cost (assuming we are successful)

We will let you know how it goes & will of course post our 'first light' images ..... fingers crossed for a successful mod.


John

Rick

What sort of camera is that? Digital, or does it put out standard video?

Anonymous

Hi Rick,

It gives out video so you need a video capture card for your laptop/ PC. The camera has a lux rating of .003

The link if you are interested is;

http://www.rfconcepts.co.uk/board_camera_bw_low_light.htm

Cheers, John

PS - Be warned the modification is not easy - I thought the Toucam Pro was hard but that wasn't anything compared to this...

Rick

What's the nature of the modification?

JohnP

Hi Rick,

It sounds like you are keen yourself. The mod basically involves lifting pins & soldering wires/ cutting tracks to enable long exposure control of the camera from a PC. The are also a couple of external control boards to put together. The hardest part is trying to attach the wires to chips on the camera the pins are very, very , very small... It took me near on 2 hrs. to solder on one wire!

To give you a feel for the mod look here:

http://www.geocities.com/jgroveuk/ExViewMod.html

Hope this helps,

John

Rick

I was more curious how a device like a video camera, which is pretty much set to produce exposures every 1/50 second, could be modified to allow longer exposures and then suitably controlled...

I am now suitably boggled. :wink:

Rocket Pooch

Hi Rick,

One of this things I'm goign to try before taking a soldering iron to it is to try "off chip integration" this is where the software at the pc collects individual frames to make up and image.  It involves no soldering at all and shoud suffice for a guide cam.

http://www.qcuiag.co.uk/ have a look on the left side and there's a section about off chip integration, its worth a looky see.


John,

This is not the camera I was on about :smile:  I'm going to save my money for a 12bit 1/2" ccd :smile:

[ This Message was edited by: csuddell on 2004-09-14 21:54 ]

JohnP

Woops ! my mistake sorry - Didn't know you were saving for another camera - John