Looking for a webcam for astrophotography?

Hi Ken,

Welcome aboard!
I'm not very experienced when it comes to astroimaging but from what little I know here's what I would do:

If you are using a webcam, try to capture plenty frames of the target. The more frames you capture, the better the image as the detail is picked up in lots of the images and the noise gets averaged out (signal/noise ratio)

If using a ccd camera for DSOs, again try and take plenty images and align & stack them in Photoshop or other package. Taking dark frames and subtracting them also helps as it removes the noise.

If you only wany to take a couple of images and not bother taking dark frames, then open the image in Photoshop.
Go to Image-->Adjust-->Levels
Next to "Input levels" change the zero value to about 20. That should help reduce the noise. Feel free to experiment with this though.

This however is based on my very limited experience with astrophotography. If there's a better way about it, hopefully someone else here will jump in with some tips also.

Hope this is a helpful start.

Michael

Hello Seanie / ctr / Michael,

Thank you for the welcome !

Seanie - Yes, that was the post I was looking for... Thank you!

ctr - you lead me to your side of the pond, I saw you lurking about NJ Night Sky and I thought I would see what's going on at Irishastronomy.org. It's a small world and the heavens are a common denominator, so we're bound to run into one another sooner or later.

Michael - You seem to be well versed in imaging for someone with little experienced.

I'm very, very new to web cam imaging and still have a few things to learn. I purchased the ToUcam from Scoptronix with the adapter, but I haven't tried astro imaging yet, I'm still learning a bit about stacking, and the camera controls before I spend to much time in front of a scope and not knowing how things work. Ya know what I'm sazzin'? LOL !

I'll be sure to keep you all advised of my progress with astro imaging!

Thank you again for the welcome and check out my home site .... www.njnightsky.com/nuke/html/index.php We are all just average guys sharing what we know about our common interest.

Hope to see you there !

Ken
Bayville, New Jersey

Orion Atlas 8EQ
Orion 80ED w/Meade LXD55 mount