Sunspots - 16th May

Nope never tried 2 webcams, It should work given a laptop that can record the images fast enough (CPU and I/O speed on the disk).

As for white light or h-alpha... I'd go with H-alpha for the contacts and white light for the rest. It might be easier to estimate the contacts _if_ there were promenences.

Cheers,
~Al

Thanks Albert,
Thats an interesting idea, to actually "see" Venus before it touches the disk should it cross a promence first !!!

Dave,

I'd use the webcam on the 12" for the simple reason that it's got a significantly longer focal length thus the image size of Venus will be much bigger/better.
While that was recording during the contacts, I'd look through the h-alpha and every few seconds take a look at the laptop screen.
During the main part of the transit, you've loads of time to switch the webcam back and forth between the two scopes.

Michael

also depends on whether you want to measure the AU during the transit, for that the ESO server will need almost half of the solar limb visible. Of course you have 5 hours to do this, so changing scopes and webcams is possible

Cheers,
~Al

Thanks Lads,
Some good ideas there, I was talking to one of the club members who has a webcam and will be attending the trasnsit event but has no laptop, so I'll see tommorrow if my laptop can run the 2 webcams simultaneous, it has 2 usb ports, so we'll see.
If not, then I'll resort to plan B, which yee have more or less described.

Hi Dave,

I do have two web cams and both will work at the same time, but not with two sessions of the the same programme. That is, it works if one is working through Vega and the other through K3CCD. If I run a second session of either programme, the second one will not connect to the second webcam.

Cannot notice any performance issues but have not tried to record with both at the same time. This would be very dependant on the USB bus hardware and the hard disk speed I would think. I can test this but feel that it would be machine specific. Hope this was of some help.

Roll on the 8th, roll back the clouds!

Michael Scully KAC/SAC