Galaxy M33

[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

[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

[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