Celestron NexImage Solar System Imager (webcam) - software

[Kenny]

Newbie in need of experience...

I obtained a Celestron imaging webcam at discounted price but haven't had much time to try it out. The software it came with was:

• Philips SPC NC900 PC camera driver.
• Celestron AMCap DirectShow Video Capture Sample v9.01
• Celestron Registax v2.1

What would you advise I use, as well as or instead of the above.

[The Thing]

Hi Kenny,

The camera is based on the Phillps SCP900NC which was defunct years ago (shame as excellent, see my recent planetary postings).The camera needs a driver, I would go to the Celestron site and download the latest/last version as anything on a manufacturer supplied CD will be old hat. You can get a driver from the Phillips website as well but there are a lot of download available and finding the one which is just the driver is not so easy so you can end up installing a lot of unnecessary guff.

Likewise the AMCap software, I haven't used it but is a well regarded video capture tool. I use Sharpcap (free) with my SPC900NC which is very good and provides useful astronomically biased features. Also when you get familiar with the basics give Firecapture a go - serious (free) planetary imaging software with tons of features.

Registax is now in version 6. Get it. And Autostakkert! [sic]. Process your captured AVIs in Autostakkert! (three clicks!) and then sharpen and tweak the results in Registax. When you load a single image in Registax it will jump to the appropriate screen.

[Kenny]

Thanks Duncan. Will definitely give that a go.

I had already twigged Registax v2.1 was very old and upgraded to v6 which I used last night. One of the benefits was it doesn't require a tracked image. It can handle the "drift method" (repeated drifts in fact) and still centralise /stack the image.

[The Thing]

... It can handle the "drift method" (repeated drifts in fact) and still centralise /stack the image.

They all can do that

Drifting is good as it is sort of like dithering with long exposure deep sky imaging in that you are using lots of different parts of the CCD so each frame has different defects which then are rejected in stacking. Just make sure you don't have an alignment point on a defect in your reference frame! Drift should ideally be slow, tens of seconds to cross the screen to minimise blur on each frame.

[Kenny]

Registax v2.1 didn't appear to be able to handle the drift though that may have been my inexperience.

I don't have much control over the drift speed as the fov of the NexImage is so narrow. I think I struggle to get 28 seconds.