Webcam Saturn from Thursday

Someone else here asked a similar question recently so I'll try and explain this as best as I understand it:

Basically, you download a free program which has software on it (or firmware to be more exact) which changes the built-in software in the Toucam Pro webcam. When uploaded onto the webcam, it prevents the camera from doing any on-the-fly processing of the images before it sends them to your pc. This way, you get the original images (or RAW images are they commonly called)

Then, once you're ready, you capture a video clip usually at 5fps as that's as fast as the camera can run without compressing the images. Once you have finished the recording, you need to convert the file so that it can be read by most software, although I think Registax can now deal with the raw video files, although mabey someone can confirm this?

More information is available here:
www.astrosurf.com/astrobond/ebrawe.htm

Clear skies,

Thanks Michael, I'll give it a whirl!

Hi Dennis

Fantastic image. What sort of focuser have you on the scope. What quality % did you use. I bet if you tried about 800 frames of that avi youll get it even better.

Dave Gradwell

Thanks Dave! I've got just the standard LX200 focuser with one of those knob thingys to give it a larger diameter. Also installed some better bearings on it a couple of years ago, came in a kit and helps eliminate backlash and provide smoother turning, sorry I can't remember who supplied it. I'm guessing you're asking about an electric focuser though...

In Registax I used the auto-processing setting with a 90% quality cutoff and further tweaked the stack graph limit to 500 frames. I've gone back numerous times to try to tease more out of the image, on various suggestions (use more frames, use only 50 of the very best frames, etc) and haven't been able to get anything significantly better but am still open to all suggestions so I'll give it a go.

Maybe others have had this experience: Using fewer frames of the best quality will give a stacked image that initially looks sharper, but breaks down and shows artifacts (graininess especially) when the wavelet sliders are tweaked? That's what I've found with this lot at least -- better to use a lot of frames, while initially not as crisp the image can stand up to much more aggressive wavelet processing. On the other hand, going all-out and stacking a huge number of frames, some marginal, doesn't improve the end result. Thoughts?

Now that I've been turned on to the RAW conversion I'll be out trying again, but of course such a night of seeing doesn't come along very often at least around here...

Cheers,

-- Denis S.

Thanks Dave! I've got just the standard LX200 focuser with one of those knob thingys to give it a larger diameter. Also installed some better bearings on it a couple of years ago, came in a kit and helps eliminate backlash and provide smoother turning, sorry I can't remember who supplied it.

Pete Peterson supplies both.
www.petersonengineering.com/SkyDiv/sky_division.htm

That's it exactly, thanks Michael.