moon shot

by the way...it is my first attempt....thought i would try just for the craic.

declan

Moon shot of Mare Imbrium & Mare Serenitatis Regions Taken on 16th Feb 2008 at 23:36 UT.
Equipment & Method: Celestron NexStar 8SE @ F6.3 & Imaging Source DFK 41AF02.AS Firewire Camera at 15fps, 1/60 exposure. ~2 Minute AVI processed in Registax and best 600 frames used for final image.
FOV: ~ 13 x 17 Arc Min, image scale ~ 0.8 arcsec/pix.

farm3.static.flickr.com/2098/2272408265_8f087c7884_b.jpg

Clear skies
Mike

A good shot there Mike, I'm again surprised by the large FOV of this camera,
Can I ask is the camera able to generate bmps also ?

Cheers Dave
Yes, capturing and saving bmps is no problem at all with the colour firewire camera. You can program “IC Capture software” that came bundled with the camera to take raw uncompressed images and save in bmp form at whatever exposure setting you want or can be done automatically. The software can then be setup to take a sequence of such bmp images at whatever time intervals one desires.

I tried this feature the other night on the Moon (1/60th sec) and took 100 bmp images at one second apart just as an experiment. I then downloaded “Deep Sky Stacker” and managed to stack the 100-bmp images with surprisingly good results for first time round using this free program.

I really like this camera Dave; it can be setup to take raw uncompressed video (I think this is Y800 format off the top of my head) so the object under observation appears B/W on the screen, but when processed in RegiStax V4 under “Debayer option” the computer can then do all the calculations to align and stack a colour RGB image. This saves disk space rather than when imaging in real time and generating 3 times larger files due to capturing colour images at the scope and tasking the PC. The camera can also be setup for long exposure astrophotography, but I am somewhat limited with my unbalanced Alt-AZ mount doing me no favours in this regard at the moment.

This camera would give you a FOV (when used with that monster you own) approximately 7 x 9 arcmin with an image scale of ~0.38 arcsec / pixel.

Clear skies
Mike

Hi Eamonn, many thanks
First light with the new camera was recently on 11th Feb with the Moon as primary target and my first real foray into the world of astrophotography, see link here: farm3.static.flickr.com/2092/2259928795_3c22f9b8cd_o.jpg

Also imaged Saturn on the same night, image is cropped, as it appears very small in the camera frame: farm3.static.flickr.com/2020/2260276151_2896b26511_o.jpg

I think I need a good EQ mount me thinks for longer exposure astrophotography of DSOs!

Clear skies
Mike

Nice shot there john.....you could nearly feel like you can touch the surface