a webcam planetary

Hi all-

Hope you don't mind the brief step outside the solar system -

I've been wanting to try using my B&W webcam on a small bright deep sky
object and had a first opportunity from the dark skies of Cherry
Springs State Park and Black Forest Star Party last weekend.

The skies were very dark - the seeing quite unsteady with much
scintillation. The luminance image is made by stacking streams with 30 second exposure frames (max for the DMK21BF04) - a total integration of about 45 minutes using the 10" mak/cass at f9.8. The video frames were surprisingly low in noise - some hot pixels (of
course I forgot to do a dark frame) and a little amp glow were removed in Photoshop. I shot RGB frames using the traveler which was piggybacked on the 10" and 1200 mount. The low res color images were pretty hard to work with - I had to do a substantial amount of color
tweaking in Photoshop.

I haven't done any deep sky work in quite a few years. For processing I used my planetary techniques in Photoshop. I was surprised and pleased that the webcam could do such a decent job.

best,
Alan

Attached Image:

Alan,

Wow! That is impressive. It makes me want to give DSO a try. Of course I'm still trying to figure out the best exposure technique for the satelites of Mars...

Hi Alan,

It seems you excel at any type of imaging you try, wonderful image!

Clear skies,
Ed Roach

Robert Heffner said:

Btw, we used to have a cabin in the mountains of Potter County north of Cherry Springs. The area definitely lives up to its name of God's Country. I was not into astronomy back then but I do remember the incredible darkness of the night sky.

Looks like you had a great time at Cherry Springs.

The Black Forest Star Party is a really nice event and pretty close - 125 miles from Buffalo. It must have been great to have a weekend retreat nearby. I love the couple of nights of camping and am glad to have the company of astronomy friends when the coyotes start howling in the middle of the night!

Alan

Superb result Alan!! I've nevr been a fan of webcam images of DSO's but I think for high surface brightness planetaries they may be just the ticket!
I wish my Starmaster was on a eq tracking platform I bet I could get some dandy images with the new Infinity camera with a bunch of unguided 30 second shots!

--Mike

Hello Alan. Interesting experiment and great results too especially for a first time. Processing is great as usual: even if the technique is the one you use with planetary images, you've got a good eye and always manage to avoid overprocessing

Congrats again Alan

Ciao
Luca 8)

Hi Alan,

Beautiful image, very well done IMO

Thanks,

Wes Higgins