Dirty Skies

Archive for March, 2005

Well, if you want to call it that. After a half dozen nights out in the dark trying to work out an imaging procedure (with the scope, an iBook and a number of different video cameras), I finally captured a decent movie of Jupiter last night.

This image is a stack of about 8 frames, post-processed in photoshop. It was taken with the Meade Lunar Planetary Imager (LPI)

click for larger

I can honestly tell you astrophotography is not a simple “point and shoot” exercise. I tried a Logitech QuickCam Pro 4000, an Apple iSight (with a hacked together homemade adapter, my Sony Camcorder (held to the eyepiece), an Olympus D-460 digitial still camera… and finally the LPI.

As with anything else I expect with practice (and more properly aligning my sight scope) it will get somewhat easier at any rate.

FUN stuff!

This evening I went out with the new Digi-T adapter I got for my Olympus D-460 digital still camera to try and my hand a Jupiter.

I found it extremely difficult to target thru the camera LCD as it was attached over the lense of the telescope. With a 2X Barlow on it was practically impossible. The motorized slewing of the scope seems sloppy at any speed and between 4X and 8X slewing speed it jumps from “too slow” to “too fast” IMHO. Also i’m going to chaulk some of the blame up to the fact that this was my first polar alignment with this scope and I was probably off a bit.

At any rate, the D-460 is pretty limited and without any manual control over the exposure time I pretty much got a whole lot of pictures of what appears to be an over-exposed, washed out star instead of the Jupiter I saw at the eyepiece.

So there’s nothing really to post as far as a reasonable image so I’m not going to bother. Suffice it to say though I did learn alot and I’m looking forward to next time.

I also expect my Meade Lunar Planetary Imager (LPI) to arrive any day now. It will be interesting to see if makes any difference.

No not with astronauts… some images I took with the LogitechQuickCam Pro 4000 while my sister and brother-in-law where here.