Posts Made By: Alan Friedman

Put this together from white light and h-alpha images taken on Feb 9th. Wish I had enough white light frames to fill the frame.

http://www.geocities.com/alanfgag/halphacloseup.gif

Geocities will only allow so many hits. If it bogs down, I'll get help with an upload to my company site tomorrow.

best -
Alan

Hi all -

This is the result of a couple of hours spent during the Academy Awards comparing the small stable of webcams I have collected over the past month or two. Because of the wide range of variables (including a different software driver for each camera) I didn't attempt a scientific study - rather I tried to see how closely I could get each to perform rendering the same scene - dimly lit, but with no turbulence to contend with. So I used as little gain as possible and let the shutter make up the difference. It would have been more meaningful to set the same shutter and vary the gain but on my Mac the shutter speed is referenced in a different way in each driver, it is impossible to set each camera the same.

In the end I was surprised to find the images so similar. The ToUcam is certainly slower than the B&W firewire cameras, and somewhat more noisy and contrasty - but it remains a fine performer. The new DMK 21BF04 seemed to produce the smoothest image and be capable of the fastest shutter setting. After stacking 20 frames, the detail in the DMK and the ToUcam were virtually identical - The Unibrain camera lagged behind slightly.

There are obvious advantages to recording at 30fps with a monochrome CCD for a high resoultion image. But I believe atmospheric conditions will be by far the deciding factor in the level of detail you will be able to capture.

Hopefully clear skies and warmer temperatures will let me offer some more meaningful comparisons in the coming months.

Alan

With jupiter peaking a little over 40 degrees, the houses behind my backyard become a big problem at 10 degrees F. The heat escaping from the rooftops plays havoc with the image. And there is only fifteen feet between them!

Taken as Jupiter passed between houses - Unibrain 400i color firewire webcam, about 250 frames from 1200. I have a feeling Jupiter is going to be a tough customer this year.

Alan

The spring waxing lunar crescent is one of my favorite sites in the sky. This is an image I made a few years back - combining two exposures from two different lenses. The details are lost, but I always thought it had a certain magical quality. Apologies for posting something old -

Happy almost spring -
Alan

Thought I had posted this here but it arrived in the After Dark Forum. Another try.

This is an image I made a few years back - combining two exposures taken with two different lenses. Seeing the beautiful waxing crescent this week reminded me of it. Apologies for posting something old but it has been too cold and snowy for new.

Happy almost spring -
Alan

Hi all -

This was taken during 15 minutes of steady (7/10) skies Friday night. I used the new DMK21BF04 with Baader UV/IR block filter to capture B&W luminance and a Unibrain 400i color webcam for RGB. 1450 frames were hand selected from 6746 for luminance. Milton Aupperle's very fine webcam driver AstroIIDC was used to capture the frames which were then processed with Keith's Image Stacker and Adobe Photoshop on a Mac platform. Telescope is my A/P 10" mak working at f30.

I've had nights with better seeing, but I think this is my most succesful processing attempt on Saturn to date.

Alan

Hi all -

This was taken during 15 minutes of steady (7/10) skies Friday night. I used the new DMK21BF04 with Baader UV/IR block filter to capture B&W luminance and a Unibrain 400i color webcam for RGB. 1450 frames were hand selected from 6746 for luminance. Milton Aupperle's very fine webcam driver AstroIIDC was used to capture the frames which were then processed with Keith's Image Stacker and Adobe Photoshop on a Mac platform. Telescope is my A/P 10" mak working at f30.

I've had nights with better seeing, but I think this is my most succesful processing attempt on Saturn to date.

Alan

I will be at NEAF on Saturday and maybe Sunday - will be outside with the Solar Star Party.

If any of you will be there I hope you will come by and say hello! It would be great to have a face to connect with all fine images I enjoy on this forum.

best -
Alan

Greetings Zeiss friends -

Recently I bought a feathertouch focuser to use as an auxilliary focuser in my 10" mak/cass. I was so pleased with the operation of this unit that I revisited an old pet peeve of mine - the helical focuser on my APQ 130. I have been talking with Werner at Starlight about making an adapter to mount their 2" focuser with 2.5" drawtube on the APQ. With this arrangement there should be enough back focus for any configuration (including Coronado's BF30 blocking filter and Baader Mark V binoviewer).

If all works out I might arrange to make a few of these. If you have had a stormy love affair with the Zeiss helical arrangement and have any interest in this project - feel free to drop me a line.

cheers -
Alan

This dramatic solar flare became even more so when it erupted into space later that day (a great sequence of the event can be seen at spaceweather.com)

5" Zeiss refractor with 90mm Coronado filter and DMK21BF04 webcam. A small number of frames stacked from very turbulent seeing conditions.

Alan