HELP: webcam planetary imaging

Hi this is Ronan from the Galway Astronomy Club, recently i purchased a Phillips ToUcam Pro for astrophotography, last week having set up the lot i tried my arm at some imagaging, i have Vega Image capture, Astrostack and Registax, the Moon was no problem but when i tried Mars at 2am and Later that night Saturn, i was finding that the images were overexposed Mars looked like a star with Spikes, saturn had the rings but were bright white, so i messed around with the settings, i nilled the Gamma and brought down the Brightness, i kept the saturation and contrast at medium, it definetly improved the image , but still too bright. after watching the image of Mars through the webcam on the "All night Star Party" i though how do you get it that good,yes i know our skies aint that good. I took a few snaps as light clouds passed in front of Mars and i started to see detail in the pictures, any one got any ideas??
One other thing we had a very succesful Mars meeting last night ,largest crowd this year so far, but we showed a Powerpoint presentation avalaible from F.A.S. England, called THE CHANGING VIEWS OF MARS, just to say well worth seeing if u can get a copy, i can get some done if any one request them.

Hi,

The wecam also has an exposure setting. So as well as specifying how long
many exposures per second you can specify the exposure. Set that some
something fast and you wont need to play too much with saturation etc.

That lets me get images anyway where I can see some detail, though Im
having trouble stacking images cleanly (see the thread on the bulletin board).

I can note down my exact settings and send them on if you like.

Can you upload the presentation to the files section? I dont see it
available on the fedastro site.

Cheers,
~Al

Hi Ronan,

I read recently that the webcam (CCDs in general) is also sensitive to infrared, I tried the exact same procedure as you and got

exactly what you’re seeing, I’m looking into getting an infrared filter which hopefully will dim and contrast the image abit more.

For instance, my camcorder can see the infrared LED on my TV remote flashing when I press any button.



Dave L.