I'm an Electronics Engineer of education, and as such like to fiddle around with homebuilt equipment.
So my first Telescope ended up being a VERY cheap department store Newtonian reflector on a terrible bad constructed EQ3-wanabe mount. I bought the telescope some years ago and have since made a lot of improvements and adjustments to make it usable. It's a 4" Newton with focallength of 500mm and a secondary of 1" - not good specs but from the start it was able to show details on jupiter and Saturn and the moon of course.
I have even added stepper motors on RA and DEC controlled by a microprocessor and A Windows interface gives me basic GOTO functionality.
In october 2005 however, I purchased a Meade LXD75 Autostar controlled EQ mount. I bought it at a company called "Astro" and their homepage is here. They give very good service and also runs whats probably the biggest or most active Ameateur Astronomy discussion forum in Scandinavia.
Later I have also bought a Meade 6"/f5 Newton which is now my primary telescope for use on the LXD75.
My main interrest is digital astrophotography, and I needed a good camera for this purpose.
I ended up on Steve Chambers site and followed his (and others) instructions on how to modyfie a webcam I had lying around. It worked well until it got fryed for some reason. I then bought a Phillips Toucam II Pro during spring 2005 and did a SC1-like modification of it.
It performes very well, especially when using the raw mod from Etienne Bonduelle (turns off cameras image enhancement and makes the raw CCD data available).
I use the Webcam with my Telescope - sometimes using a Meade 2x Barlow. I also use a 35mm/f2.8 and a 135mm/f2.8 mountet on the EQ mount. These lenses are great for getting the larger deepsky objects
Recently I have made experiments with the original f2.6 and f2.2 lenses for webcams. They are pretty good for widefield. The lense for the SPC900 gives a field of 55degrees.
After the purchase of the LXD75, I discovered that I could track for many minutes without tracking errors when using the SLR lenses, and then wanted to do longer exposures of 3-5 minutes. This is a problem for the SC1 modyfied cam, because there is a "glow" from some internal amplifier. SO I had to do the "AmplifierOFF" modification which would upgrade the cam to SC1.5 status. I used the latest available version introduced by Tom How. You can see a description off my Modifications under the equipment page below.
Update 2006-03-08: I have modded a Philips SPC900NC webcamera to level SC1. See my page HERE
I also do Northern Light photography when its available in Denmark, which is not very often
But here is is a tool to help me find out when to look out for Auroras:
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Solar X-rays: Geomagnetic Field: |
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MY EQUIPMENT
Here's my some of my latest pictures:
click on thumbnails to view Larger images and details in a new window. You dont have to close it to see the others. They will show in the same window
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Title date (yyyy-mm-dd) |
Description |
Thumbnail |
| SUN 2005-10-03 Partial Solareclipse |
PWC semiraw on 135mm/f2.8
and UV/IR filter. this is one frame of 835 taken that day. This is around maximum. The video is 1.89Mb, and is aprox 400 frames in timelapse, clipped from original grab. It is best show with Realplayer because of a bug in windows mediaplayer. |
Video 1.89Mb |
| M101 - first
attempt 2005-09-08 |
PWC semiraw on 135mm/f2.8
and UV/IR filter. Image is a stack of 7 exposures each 71seconds. Master Dark of 7x71seconds has been subtracted. Autolevels and Autocontrast and retouch of artifacts from subtracted hotpixels. Big feature in lower part, is the roof of my house coming into some of the last frames in the stack. |
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| M101 - first
attempt 2005-09-08 processed |
PWC semiraw on 35mm/f2.8
and UV/IR filter. Image is a stack of 20 exposures each 60seconds. Master Dark of 9x60seconds has been subtracted. Autolevels and Autocontrast and retouch of artifacts from subtracted hotpixels. The Light pollution is clearly a problem. I think i will go somewhere else to try this object. |
Cart Du Ceil map |
| M101 - first
attempt 2005-09-08 |
PWC semiraw on 35mm/f2.8
and UV/IR filter. Image is a stack of 20 exposures each 60seconds. Master Dark of 9x60seconds has been subtracted. M101 was in bad position and transparancy poor. combined with haze and lightpollution, this became a hard object to find. Stacking is now done offline in Registax. |
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| M31 - Andromeda
Galaxy 2005-08-31 Postprocessed |
This Version of the M31 is
a stack of 7 exposures each 70seconds. 6x70seconds dark has been subtracted and artifacts from hotpixels removed. Slight curve and color adjustments has been used to darken background. Image is with South up. M32 and M110 is clearly visible |
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| M31 - Andromeda
Galaxy 2005-08-31 Postprocessed |
This Version of the M31 is
a stack of 7 exposures each 70seconds. 6x70seconds dark has been subtracted and artifacts from hotpixels removed. Extensive Curve and color adjustments has been used to darken background and ligthen foreground. Automatic level and contrast adjustments has been used Image is with South up. M32 and M110 is clearly visible |
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| M31 - Andromeda
Galaxy 2005-08-31 |
PWCSC1 on 35mm/2.8 Vivitar,
Baader UV/IR Cut. Sharpness turned off (=0), and gain=60%. One
exposure of 70seconds. 6x70sec Dark subtracted. Seeing was ok, transparancy
very good - even though I am in the suburbs of Copenhagen - the
Milky Patches was easily seen. This is my second attempt at M31. This Time I got much better focus. I still have problems with dew on lens. Have to wipe after 80-90 seconds. I took 15 exposures - some of them not good. I will stack them later. In this exposure some details of the galaxy can be seen. Stars around Mag13 can be identified in this image according to CarteDuCeil. This Image has been postprocessed to make background darker and increasing the blue channel. |
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| Polaris 2005-08-31 |
PWCS1 on 35mm/f2.8. Sharpness
off, gain=60%. Stack of 20x35sec exposures. Dark is 10x35sec. This Image was for testing the Raw Modification. This really isn't the TRUE rawmod, because I only did the changing of sharpness and the gains. The test was good - image is smooth and stars are now without the ears. stacking now produces a very nice picture. I do need to find a better way of doing the stacking. This one was done in Astrosnap with tracking off. Hot pixels should be meaned out instead of subtracted. Otherwise black holes in image is the result. I wil go over to using K3CCDTOOLS for aquirering next time and do offline stacking in registax. This Image shows a part of the sky sourrounding Polaris. As the image shows this part is NOT empty sky as it looks like to the naked eye! |
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| M31 - Andromeda Galaxy 2005-08-09 |
PhillipsWebcamSC1
on 35mm/f2.8 Vivitar, Baader UV/IR Cut filter. Gain set
low. Stack of 4 unguided exposures, each 40sec. Stacked online
using AstroSnap. Darkframes: mean of 3x40sec. Seeing: good, but the night got very cold and condensation on optics was a major problem. Had to wipe every 2-3 minutes. I have to find a way to keep the lense warmer than the air. Also my focusing is BAD, later I had sharper images but dew problems gave me problems so this one is the best saved image of the night. Next time I have to activate Rawmode to get rid of those "ears". |
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| M57 - Ring Nebula in Lyra 2005-08-09 |
PhillipsWebcam
SC1 on 135mm/f2.8 Kenlock, Baader UV/IR Cut filter. Gain set medium. Stack of 2 unguided exposures, each 90sec. Stacked online. Darkframes: 1x90sec. Seeing: good, but dew problem very big and sky slightly brighter. My mount suffers from large cyclic errors and I have not yet built PEC into my system. I therefore had to time my exposures with the best intervals. I was stunned by the amount of stars I got in this picture. Its on the edge of the Milkyway patches and therefore densely populated - I will later try to identify the highest magnitude in this picture - Currently I use MyStars for getting starmaps, but It only show a few of the bright stars in the image (around Mag 8-9). So I will need at better program with larger database. |
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| M31 - enhanced view 2005-08-09 |
curve enhanced
version of the above M31 showing the details hidden close to the
Noise floor. |
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| M42 - Orion Nebula |
Olympus E100RS
at zoomed at 70mm. 1x16sec exposure. Dark subtracted. Piggyback
on telescope. Image distorted and unsharp at edges. This is due to a corecting lense I had to put in front of camera because in PC controlled (and manually) mode E100RS and other Olympus cams cannot truely focus at infinity. I had to correct using standard -0.25 eyeglas lense which gives me possibility of good focus - but only in part of the image. Stars at edges looks like drops. |
M42 |
Last Edited: 2006-04-23
Visits since 2005-11-16:
