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Post by virgo on Apr 1, 2012 15:16:15 GMT
The Moon is a favourite target for imagers providing plenty of scope for spectacular pictures. Copernicus caught on the terminator. Attachments:
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Post by virgo on Apr 1, 2012 15:18:55 GMT
Plato is distinctive because of the dark floor. Also the site of TLP. Attachments:
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Post by brianb on Apr 1, 2012 15:20:45 GMT
That's nice!
What was your seeing like? It was moderate (unusually good by local standards) up here early in the night but was deteriorating to fairly severe "swimming pool" conditions later ... odd because the temperature had stabilised ...
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Post by virgo on Apr 1, 2012 15:29:14 GMT
Arzachel, Alphonsus and Ptolemaus and Hipparchus at sunrise. Attachments:
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Post by virgo on Apr 1, 2012 15:49:02 GMT
Hello Brian, Seeing was of the "super boiling" sort with violent shifts of the image. I am always tempted to hang on to see if it improves, but it rarely does. The lunar shots were taken with a Sirius 5mp webcam. This device claims that the sensor has a resolution of 5megapixels, but it is a fraud of course, as it is achieved by interpolation. Still, it appears to produce superior images to that of the Philips SPC900. it is quite useless for planetary work as the frame rate is fixed at 30fps, but all other controls are available. Attachments:
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Post by brianb on Apr 2, 2012 11:13:36 GMT
May not be a real issue. At the long focal lengths usually used for planetary work, you're not likely to get much more than 30 fps anyway ... except on Mars & Venus and not even on Mars in the blue channel.
My older Imaging Source camera - the DMK21AU04 - was almost always used at 30 fps & the maximum speed of the larger format DMK21 camera is 15 fps. My images seem to prove this is not too much of a handicap!
What can be very useful for planetary work is the ability to set a "region of interest" so that you can collect more frames without using up too much disc space - there's not much point in storing huge amounts of black space surrounding the planet, which is not likely to be filling the frame of a camera, even one with a very small imaging chip. When I'm imaging planets with the DMK21 I set a 320 x 320 RoI which enables me to store 10,000 raw frames in a 1GB file.
Your Alzachel images is very fine except for the nasty colour cast: I'd suggest changing the tone from magenta to tan and/or desaturating, or simply converting to monochrome. The Moon doesn't have much colour anyway which is why I usually shoot only red channel (longer wavelengths having less seeing issues).
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