After my experimental “first light” imaging session with my newly modified Phillips SPC900NC webcam for Long Exposures (Steve Chambers mod), I have now processed the images and this is what they look like. They’re not visually fantastic, but for a first attempt I’m well pleased. Generally they were 15-20 second exposures. They couldn’t be any [...] Read more »
Its the end of another long cold session with my Celestron C6-SGT and everything is packed away. Ice is melting off the screen of my laptop as I type and drink a nice mug of hot chocolate. Its been a very nice clear night and finally, at last, I have been able to try out [...] Read more »
Here are the processed images of Mars from my imaging session last night using an SPC900NC webcam and 2x Barlow, with my C6-SGT XLT telescope.
These were approx. 10 x 30 second duration AVI sequences which I aligned and stacked using K3CCDTools, and including some histogram and unsharp mask enhancement to bring out the details.
I only [...] Read more »
Just a quick diary post tonight. More practice at setting up and polar alignment of my EQ5 Synscan Goto, and C6 SCT, to try and get some webcam images of Mars. I’ve managed to get some footage at prime focus and 2xBarlow recorded into K3CCDTools. Too late to be processing tonight, so pics will have [...] Read more »
After my previous attempts at getting some AVI captures of the star clusters in Auriga M36, M37, M38 and M35 in Gemini, with my webcam (which is not yet modified for long exposures) with my C6-SGT, this picture of M35 was the best out of them, although I admit it still pales in comparison to [...] Read more »
The new Moon and a reasonably clear night tempted me this evening to setup the Celestron C6-SGT, but with the Moon low in the sky, and between buildings it was a race to get setup in time before it sank below the rooftops. My intention was to setup the scope’s Goto with the serial link [...] Read more »
Quite a while ago I bought a 0.8x Focal Reducer for my XT10i telescope in the hope that I would be able to obtain a wider field of view when taking astronomy pictures with my SPC900NC webcam.
Unfortunately I couldn’t get the damn thing to focus, even with my Low-Profile Crayford Focuser. It may be just [...] Read more »
The last time I took some pictures of planet Saturn was 1 year ago in March 2008. How time flies when you’re waiting for weather good enough to get the telescope out!
In fact these latest pictures were taken with the same webcam, but now with my new Celestron C6 SGT telescope.
You can see several photos [...] Read more »
Hey hey! I’m pleased as punch. I’ve taken a picture of M42 The Great Orion Nebula showing the Trapezium stars using my Orion Skyquest XT10i telescope.
“Yeah, so what, loads of people take photos of the Orion Nebula with their scopes”, you say.
Aha, but how many people attempt it with a Dobsonian mounted scope WITHOUT motorised [...] Read more »
Tonights viewing was an attempt to obtain some better webcam footage of Jupiter. As usual though, it was very low in the sky, and I have only a short timeslot due to gaps between buildings. In fact I stood the XT10 on top of my patio dining table to give it sufficient height to see [...] Read more »
