Video astronomy part II (with picture)

[VinSnr]

Tonight the sky was very clear, but the dew was also very heavy. I just wanted to take some pictures straight off the monitor in order to give you guys a sense of scale when using video.

I took a couple of M4, M13 and Omega Centauri before the dew came and attack my lens. I wanted to wait for M17 to rise higher but by then, the dew was too heavy and I had to call it for the day. Next time will go with heat pack and everything.

M4 and M13 didn't turn out well because I didn't have a camera tripod and had to use my hand to hold the Nikon CoolPix 4500 at 1/4 second exposure. Needless to say, the picture turn out shaky. But Omega centauri was not too bad at 1/8 second (ISO100). The picture below shows the sense of scale right off the LCD monitor. This picture has zero image processing done on it except to rescale the picture to fit into here.

Now the beautiful part is this. The below picture was captured by Watec 120N at only half intensity! Not even full intensity yet. Full intensity would produce too much noise and I had to tone it down to around half. But it is already pretty amazing! (the picture not exactly very sharp because I was holding the camera at 1/8 second exposure...so some shake on the hand would be unavoidable)

Now, this is using Nexstar 5i only. Imagine if you have a bigger scope! My jaw nearly dropped when this image suddenly "fly" into the LCD screen out of nowhere. When I look up, I can't even see it using naked eyes.

Please login to see the picture or go to this link : http://www.singastro.org/files/omega_159.jpg

[wucheeyiun]

Wow ....really like textbbok picture, If you used LCD panel, it will be a better flat field

And yes, last night was so clear, it look like a hint of Mersing at the south starry night sky, at midnight. Great night for astro. I could spot Scopius.

Hi vincent, do you have one of those portable video recorder that you can connect to the camera and save in .avi format for processing?

[VinSnr]

Wow ....really like textbbok picture, If you used LCD panel, it will be a better flat field

And yes, last night was so clear, it look like a hint of Mersing at the south starry night sky, at midnight. Great night for astro. I could spot Scopius.

Hi vincent, do you have one of those portable video recorder that you can connect to the camera and save in .avi format for processing?

It was from a flat LCD panel. But I was holding onto the digital camera and it was hard to hold it exactly square with the LCD monitor.

I do not have the DV recorder, but I can find one if I want one.

[mrngbss]

Does you mean that using the Watec, we can capture (video) what we see for processing(Registax)?

[wucheeyiun]

Yes, you convert .avi video file to individual .bmp frame and stack. This is one of the common methods.