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After many years of taking afocal 'snaps' at the eyepiece the Mercury transit tempted me to get involved in imaging at the basic 'entry level.' Of course I left it far too late to become truly familiar with the camera or the vital software involved. The dinky little Neximage 5 camera arrived at lunchtime on Saturday and the transit is on Monday. Another roundtoit! I had always hoped to use my Philips webcam cameras but can't get the drivers to work with W10! The price step up to the "proper" imaging cameras even for the Celestron has put me off getting involved until now.
Needing something to practice on indoors and preferably near the PC I set up the 70mm Bresser refractor on its mounting and tripod. Then pointed the little telescope out of the window at a distant target after loading the supplied iCap and Registax 6.1 software from the disk. Focusing was an issue due to the tiny field of view even at maximum resolution and picture size. This narrowness in visible area really has to be experienced to be believed!
My target was a modestly sized, car trailer at exactly 300 yards [according to Google Earth] At full 5M image size and 20% I could just get the trailer body in view. When reduced to 640x480 @ 100% I could only get perhaps 2 wheel widths into the view box on the iCap screen. Bear this small field of view in mind when you are trying to find a tiny object in the very big sky!
I spent a couple of hours familiarizing myself with the iCap 3.1 software and capturing a few videos. Repeatedly watching an excellent series of instruction videos by wwgeb on YouTube helped the routing settings to eventually sink in. His multiple videos are highly recommended for their excellent production qualities and avoidance of irrelevant distractions.
The plan is to practice on the Sun today to see what can be done by a complete beginner before tomorrow's big day. I plan to capture a number of videos even if the Registax becomes more familiar over time. One the avi files are safely on my hard drive I can steadily increase my skill levels at stacking and "improving" them in Registax. Or not, if I mess up the avi files.
One could not ask for a more stable run of clear, sunny weather for the transit. The last Mercury transit was clouded over and the brand new "discount" re-chargeable batteries would not hold a charge! To this day I am uncertain whether I actually captured Mercury or merely a tiny sunspot. I had much more luck with the Venus transit.
Now I need to set up my old twin core AMD PC with iCap on board to capture some videos for some hands-on experience under the open sky. I can't reach my indoor PC with a USB cable and don't own a laptop. I just hope that older computer, and I, are up to the task!
One could not ask for a more stable run of clear, sunny weather for the transit. The last Mercury transit was clouded over and the brand new "discount" re-chargeable batteries would not hold a charge! To this day I am uncertain whether I actually captured Mercury or merely a tiny sunspot. I had much more luck with the Venus transit.
Now I need to set up my old twin core AMD PC with iCap on board to capture some videos for some hands-on experience under the open sky. I can't reach my indoor PC with a USB cable and don't own a laptop. I just hope that older computer, and I, are up to the task!
Click on any image for an enlargement.
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2 comments:
Hi Chris, Glad the camera arrived and the YouTube links were useful. All I would add, and underline in triplicate if possible though markup will not permit it, is this:
The one thing you cannot refine after the event is the quality if the video you captured. Registax skills can improve, but the key things to focus on are:
1) Focus (pun intended!) - double check before each image capture that you have best possible focus
2) Speed - get the best possible compromise between the related settings for shutter speed (fast as possible), frame rate (fast as possible) and gain (low as possible) - and ensure that you are not choosing a frame rate faster than the shutter speed would permit
3) Exposure - make sure you leave a little headroom in the histogram, because wavelet processing in Registax will increase the range
Having said all that, best if luck! Andrew
Hi Andrew
Thanks for the expert advice.
Only tried the camera on the Sun on the MkIII so far.
My old Vista computer is working with a small LCD monitor in a large cardboard box for shade.
You are absolutely right about the difficulty of focusing.
Even using the little 90mm f/11 refractor the Sun is huge!
Practice, practice and more practice by the look of it.
Regards
Chris
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