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Bodes Nebula & Cigar Galaxy

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Posts Made By: Anthony Wesley

July 23, 2005 05:35 AM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Solar System

Lunar: Herschel

Posted By Anthony Wesley
Robert Heffner said:

Wo! Excellent image Bird!!

What is your evaluation of the Lumenera so far? (besides the software/Linux issue)


The camera seems very capable, I have no complaints except for the lack of open source uses. The new version of Streampix has fixed one of my main complaints with the addition of automatic sequence file naming, that's one thing I had under linux that I was missing so it's not quite as much of an issue now.

I'm still leaning toward wanting a firewire camera because I use usb2 for hard disks, and on my laptop there's not enough bandwidth to capture and use an external drive.

regards, Anthony

July 30, 2005 03:46 AM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Solar System

Good camera for planetary imaging

Posted By Anthony Wesley
Hi Rick.

I'm waiting on a camera, the Dragonfly Express from Point Grey Research (www.ptgrey.com). It's unknown how it will be for astronomy, I can't find anyone who's used it for that but from my research it looks like the best option available.

It's expensive, which is a drawback, but if it's sensitive enough then it should be a real planet killer. The ccd is from Kodak and can run up to 200fps, also gives 12 bit per pixel as compared to the Lumenera cameras at 10 bit per pixel.

The biggest unknown is how sensitive it is, and how suited to astronomy it is. I've arranged to purchase it under their evaluation program, so I can return it if it ends up not being suitable, but I have good expectations. The CCD is rated as 55% QE, peaking in the blue which is the part of the spectrum where I always seem to have trouble getting enough light.

You might consider other cameras from them as well - the dragonfly and high-res dragonfly are also good looking cameras. The dragonfly uses the same ccd as the Lumenera LU075M.

regards, Anthony

August 2, 2005 10:40 PM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Solar System

Martian Volcanoes

Posted By Anthony Wesley
Wonderful shot Alan!

With images like these coming already, it's clear to me that mars at 20" across will be imaged much better than the 2003 mars at 25".

Anthony

September 11, 2005 12:19 AM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Solar System

Mars RGB Imaging

Posted By Anthony Wesley
Nice work kirk, I also focus each colour seperately and it seems to make a significant improvement.

regards, Anthony

September 20, 2005 11:39 AM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Solar System

DMK firewire 1024x768 rocks like none!

Posted By Anthony Wesley
Very nice image Dominique!

I had earmarked an almost identical firewire camera (hi-res dragonfly from pt grey)
as my ideal "lunar" camera, to purchase when my bank balance recovers
and your image seems to confirm it.

regards, Anthony

September 22, 2005 10:51 AM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Solar System

Mars September 22 2005

Posted By Anthony Wesley
Here is an image from about 1 hour earlier, captured at 15fps for all channels. I was having real probems with haze stealing light from my camera.

The lower fps results in a lower noise image, but not as much detail.

regards, Anthony

September 22, 2005 09:57 PM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Solar System

Mini mars 2005.09.22.

Posted By Anthony Wesley
Hi Oliver, very nice!

Anthony

September 23, 2005 12:26 AM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Solar System

Shadows in Maurolycus

Posted By Anthony Wesley
Wonderful image Wes!

Anthony

September 23, 2005 01:02 AM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Solar System

Rotational periods and image scale

Posted By Anthony Wesley
Hi Bryan.

Yes, image scale has an effect - the smearing is only seen when features move laterally more than the size of your pixels, so the larger the image scale the faster this will happen.

It depends on your focal length and the size of the pixels in your camera. Rather than try to work out a formula I took the easy way out and just compared first & last frames from capture sessions to see if I could see any rotation.

Using a camera with 5.6 micron pixels and a focal length of 6000mm I decided that I could tolerate 1 degree of rotation.

For Jupiter that means capture sessions must be no more than 90 seconds, and for Mars it comes to about 4 minutes.

YMMV

regards, Anthony

September 23, 2005 06:55 AM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Solar System

Another Mars from September 22

Posted By Anthony Wesley
For those people (like me!) with different types of monitors, it's hard to get an image that looks good on all of them. e.g. my lcd monitor shows an image to be really crisp but when I compare it on my crt it looks fuzzy.

Anyway, here's the above image processed a bit further, including a monochrome version. If you're on an lcd screen then this might look a bit too far processed but on most crt screens it might look better than the original.

regards, Bird

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