Webcam and the planets

just to jump in here,
The toucam is CCD based amazingly!,
The 300D is cmos based

Dave G - I could be wrong but as far as I know there are no CCD webcams out there. Or DSLR's. They are all CMOS devices. I'm not an expert though... :oops:

Cheers


Dave McD

Hi Dave,

The pentax *istD and the Nikon D70 are CCD.
I have an astronomy now review of them vs the EOS 300D and they said they couldn't tell any difference.

Simon

Simon,
That concurs with a few reviews I've seen also. In faact, Digital Photo magazine did back-to-back comparisons between the 300d, nikon d70, Olympus E300 and the Pentax *ist DS. They found that for daytime images the 300d was better for exposure control, iso & noise control and for image quality.

Dave G - I could be wrong but as far as I know there are no CCD webcams out there. Or DSLR's. They are all CMOS devices. I'm not an expert though... :oops:

Cheers


Dave McD

Hi Dave,

From the logitech website;
"Combining a digital zoom, built-in microphone and high-quality VGA CCD sensor, the QuickCam Pro 4000 is the choice for video power users. "

www.logitech.com/index.cfm/products/deta...=2204,CONTENTID=7313

From the Philips website;

www.p4c.philips.com/files/p/pcvc840k_00/pcvc840k_00_pss_eng.pdf

"Sensor: VGA CCD"

Told you I wasn't an expert :oops: :oops:

Cheers!

Dave McD

Now here's a picture that surprised me. The top image is taken by a modified webcam :shock: Not sure of the mods but its pretty spectacular. I'm sure the mods will be somewhere on this guy's site

www.lx200gps.nl/lx200images.html

And by the way Denis - no matter what your first image is like, it really isn't as easy as most folks think it might be to get an astro image. So well done.

The purple cast is certainly down to the lack of an IR filter. This cast will only show up on bright objects (terrestrial, moon, planets). But I'm not sure if the webcam you have would be sensitive enough to take anything dimmer.

Like anything else, practice and preparation are the key - in bucket loads. But keep it up and you will be rewarded. Also, the Skylux is actually a nice scope. I think its as good as the ETX70. That said, the mount isn't the best but certainly the optics seem pretty good. I managed a blurry image of M51 in the very short window of oppotunity before the clouds rolled in so the scope is certainly up to it. Nice field of view too.

Cheers

Dave McD