Dear All,

I'd like to take digital photographs of astronomical objects. I have a webcam. I was surprised to find that its possible to take pictures of the planet Mars using a webcam (+ software to add images together), for example see http://www.randi.org/jr/080803.html

I'd like to know how this is done.

Also whats the cheapest way to do astrophotography of things like the Andromeda galaxy? (Telescope with tracking mount etc)

Your thoughts please.

D.

PS I've written to James McGaha asking how he did it. If he replies, I'll post it here.

I followed the links to the camera companies' sites, Their two 'web-cams' cost $2000 and $6500 US.


Here is how it was done.
http://www.grasslands.org/GrassImageGallery.htm

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It is realtively easy to take nice pictures of the Moon and the planets with webcams. You can take short video sequences and then align and stack the best images. There are lots of programmes available to do this, we use Registax which is freeware (we use a TouCam Pro webcam).

Webcam astrophotography of deep sky objects is more tricky and requires the modification of your webcam in order to do longer exposures.

The best place to start for information about this is:

http://www.qcuiag.co.uk/

The following pages are also helpful and have some nice pictures:

http://frontpage.wave.co.nz/~jtalbot/

http://www.usno.navy.mil/pao/QuickCamAstro.shtml

The UK Society for Popular Astronomy has some nice shots of Mars with webcams linked from it's front page just now. There are many members there using webcams who are always very keen to share their knowledge (there is a bulletin board - you don't have to be a member to use the site).

Http://www.popastro.com

A telescope with a driven equatorial mount is usually held to be pretty essential for any kind of astrophotography if you are using film although for bright objects you might be able to get away with it if you do a short exposure.

For digital imaging, the software you can obtain for stacking and aligning images can compensate for static mounts and the QCUIAG webpage has an article about this. Although I haven't tried it myself I have seen examples where it has been done sucessfuly.

I have never used one - but many members of our Club are using the Phillips ToUcan video camera (sells for $150) and getting some really good images.
Here is a link to Michael Covington's ("Astrophotography for Amateurs") website showing his first attempt with one.

http://www.covingtoninnovations.com/astro/exhibit.html

That is way cool. I have a quickcam but I never heard of software that could combine pictures like that. Time to get on it.

Last Friday while looking at Mars I got out my electronic camera, zoomed it to max, jammed it against the eyepiece, focussed with the scope and snapped a few shots. I was stunned with the results.

Not that they are great, but the seeing was pretty cheesy (high altitude turbulence) and I have to say that I can see about as much detail in the pictures as I could catch visually (polar cap, dark markings). MUCH better than nothing.

A question for the experts out there. Looking at the RGB tone map of the image I was a bit surprised to see relatively narrow response bands in each color. By narrowing the response curves I got much greater contrast. Is this a property of the Martian image or of the CCD collection process in the camera?

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I've used my Sony digi-cam several times to take astro photo's through the telescope eyepiece. I even created a makeshift "mount" using a paper tube (T.P. tube) that I slip over the scope eyepiece and the camera lens. Coincidentally, the lens and eyepiece are very close to the same size. It helped to split the tube along the length and reduce the diameter to the size of my eyepiece/camera lens combo. I then used masking tape to hold the paper tube to the proper diameter.

Makes great photos of the moon (excellent lunar images), Saturn, Mars, and Venus. It's a little tricky at first, but you get the hang of it. I even use the camera timer to snap the picture to minimize telescope vibration.

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Using the autotimer to reduce vibration #-o

Thanks, Q!

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No problem.

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It is a matter of common experience that disorder will tend to increase if things are left to themselves. - Stephen Hawking