Damien Pach webcam article in AN

Did any webcammers read the article by Damian Peach in this months AN. In it he suggests using shorter length AVIs at 20fps to prevent blurring of planetary details.
BTW, is it my imagination or are the "how to" articles in AN written so as to give th least information on "how to" as possible. Wheb I saw this piece first I thought, great he'll give out some avi settings etc but we got none of it.
Anyway will try 20fps and post any results I get

DaveG

Sounds interesting,
I'm building up a small list of different webcam settings and will try them when I good clear night, there a clear nightreciently but the seeing was bad, nothing you can do there.

As for AN, last time I bought one of those was about 2 years ago, not because of anything bad, but at the time I thought there was replication between it and S&T, so I just settled on the one, do you find its worth getting both.

I have to say that the telescope adds in the back pages (AN) were quite interesting, just to see current second hand prices and whats availalbe, I might go into Easons today and have a looksee.

The theory is certainly correct. Make exposure for PLANTEARY objects as short as you can get away with to get shots where good seeing prevails for a moment. Then stack the better pictures of the range with registax or Iamage plus.
regads
Jouke

AN - Ihad it on order but I've just stopped it. I can have a look from month to month and then get one if there's anything in it. I just find that the articles are very generic and don't go into enough detail.

20fps - The shortest exposure is fine but the frame quality at 20fps is quite noisey. As soon as the cloud clears (if ever judging by the latest forcasts) I'll try it and see.

DaveG

DaveL

I remembered what I meant to ask you at Galway. Is astrosnap any better than the others and how does DCT work? I've had it sitting zipped for a while and just havent opened it yet.

DaveG

DaveG,
I find astrosnap a nice program to use, I can move my scope and focus it using this program (LX200). There is a built in autofocus which I havent got working yet, maybe it only works on point light sources (I've only tried it on planets so far).

DCT (discrete cosine transform "I think") digitally analyses the image and generates a number (uses digital filters), if the quality is bad, it generates a low number, if its high quality then a high number is generated and so on.
What you do is run the program for about 10-15 seconds and you'll get low-high values and the program selects a number in the middle, and when you start capturing it only records BMPs which have a quality better then this number, you can set it yourself if you want.
Real nifty, so you dont fill you're harddrive with garbage.

There is also an auto tracking feature which I haven't used yet. From what I can make out of it, it will autoguide the scope on your target object(compensates for missalligned polar mount etc), thus keeping the image centered in the field.
So this program appears to capture, filter and autoguide/error correct the scope all at the same time, and its free off the web !!

Mine is version 1.3d, I haven't checked for a new version for a while now, but this version doesnt seem to have telescope options for celestron of other meade scopes.