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Date: 08 Nov 2006 23:14:04
From: Regina Roper
Subject: First results, Mercury transit digital image: now posted
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Friends:
Here's the best we could obtain in the last hour after taking our
images by processing just the stills we took; but eventually we will
be able to do better, I think, by using the videos.
Direct link to image:
http://home.earthlink.net/~steve_waldee/digital/merc-transit.jpg
This was, I believe, 1/750th second with our modified Logitech webcam
at prime focus on our Orion 120mm f/8 achromat, using a standard
neutral density solar filter. There was a little sharpening and
contrast manipulation applied to the whole image.
We added it also at the bottom of our Eyepiece home page:
http://home.earthlink.net/~steve_waldee/index.html
The frustrating thing about this event was that my husband spent most
of the afternoon Tuesday preparing...setting everything up...doing
test pictures thru the scope...marking positions of the instrument for
polar alignment, and for the best "shot" at the sun before it went
down below the top of our garage. We needed to have the scope within
20 feet of the desktop machine set up permanently in the garage to do
solar system pix, and everything was worked out JUST RIGHT.
Then: this morning, as promised by the forecast: terrible overcast.
First contact lost. Sun in the only cloud in the sky until just
before 1:20 or so. And we knew we'd miss the last contact because of
the position of the house and trees: so this was done in a half hour
window when things worked out. BUT...
XP Pro refused to work right and upon booting, would not open the
Logitech control panel! With minutes to go, we gave up after several
reboots and went to our "emergency" backup on an old machine with Win
ME. Then we took some stills and a couple of videos, but at a
critical moment the USB extension cord got loose: and as always
happens with ME, a "hot" disconnect of a USB device causes a lock-up:
two stills were lost -- really good ones, too! -- that were not yet
written to the hard drive. Upon rebooting the whole shebang we did
get a few more shots using our 4" RFT scope as well, and got a wider
field than the refractor image linked above. We'll see how those come
out.
All too soon the sun was behind the roof. We just barely scraped by
in the 'window of opportunity' - lucky that this particular shot was
acceptable.
Murphy's Law did not let us down.
Best,
RR
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Date: 08 Nov 2006 18:48:09
From: Patrick Edward Murray
Subject: Re: First results, Mercury transit digital image: now posted
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We missed it here in suburban Philadelphia as all we saw were cloudy
skies and
"Aqueous Meteors" falling from the sky.
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Date: 09 Nov 2006 00:09:30
From: Regina Roper
Subject: Re: First results, Mercury transit digital image: now posted
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Here's another of our images done today of the Mercury transit: this
one was using my own lowly little Orion Starblaster 4.1" RFT scope,
which costs about $179. No drive, fixed aim, still shot of about
1/500th second at prime focus with modified Logitech webcam. To get
it to focus I had to unscrew the eyepiece centering/holder ring on the
outside end of the focusing tube, which got the webcam about a quarter
inch closer, allowing focus without using a Barlow.
http://home.earthlink.net/~steve_waldee/digital/merc-sol-starblaststill.jpg
The image does not have the ultimate resolution of the one did with
the longer focal length, slightly larger aperture 120mm achromat, so
it would not stand up to quite as much processing as the earlier one I
linked to in my previous post.
Here's the modified webcam, in a shot that Stephen did of himself last
year right after he put the thing together:
http://home.earthlink.net/~steve_waldee/digital/Modified.jpg
What he did to modify this $30 gadget is described in our articles:
http://home.earthlink.net/~steve_waldee/digital/digital.htm
This is the little scope, in a picture we did for some lunar tests at
night.
http://home.earthlink.net/~steve_waldee/digital/LittleScope-webcam.jpg
...and this is one of the lunar pictures:
http://home.earthlink.net/~steve_waldee/digital/Mak-Moon.jpg
Finally, a shot Stephen did with the 120mm f/8 achromat of a sunspot
group
http://home.earthlink.net/~steve_waldee/digital/sunspot-closeup.jpg
None of these used a clock drive. That illustrates how easy it is to
start doing celestial pictures with a simple scope & webcam.
RR
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Date: 09 Nov 2006 00:36:27
From: Regina Roper
Subject: Re: First results, Mercury transit digital image: now posted
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Final image: here is a composite of 63 best frames, stacked from a 25
second AVI file made with the Logitech webcam on the Orion 120mm f/8
refractor, no drive. Regitax 3 was used to register, stack, and
wavelet process a cropped closeup region of Mercury as it transited
across Sol, around 1:45 pm Tuesday, PDT, in San Jose, California.
http://home.earthlink.net/~steve_waldee/digital/merc-sol-videoframes.jpg
Here's the scope, in a photo taken earlier when we bought it:
http://home.earthlink.net/~steve_waldee/digital/quito-refractor.jpg
RR
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