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VIDEO ASTRONOMY


Summer-fall 2007 with a digital camcorder

Telescope
LX200 12" (except otherwised mentionned)
Optical complement
Celestron 35mm (afocal mode) + eventually Televue barlows
Adaptators and rings

Cylindrical tube adapteur with male 43mm thread at one end (specially made by Laurent Marechal, Belgium, to accomodate large eyepieces)
37mm -> 43mm ring

Camcorder
Sony DCR-PC 110 mini DV (firewire and Video, In & Out), different zoom values
25 fps. NightShot and sometimes Super NightShot for dark objects (or sun H Alpha)
Digitalisation
XP- Windows Movie Maker - as most uncompressed AVI (about 15Go / hour)
(or UFO capture 2)
Selection, cutting, cropping, saving to Registax readable AVI
VirtualDub
Addition, registration of images, wavelet filter
Registax4
Finalisation
Irfanview, PSP, Astrosnap Pro
   

The incredible 17P/Holmes comet (20071030) using super nightshot mode, 3 min captures

above at minimum zoom

above at maximum optical zoom

 

M13 (super night shot)

 

M57 (super night shot)

First images !

Venus

20070904-0846 UT

Mars

20070904-05xx UT

Left : at main focal plane
Right : 3x barlow

Clavius

20070904-05xxUT

Jupiter

20070904-210544UT

Sun (H-Alpha) with the Coronado PST
Collimation of the telescope with a star test and Astrosnap Pro (superimposed red figure) to examine in details the correction to be done ...

 

Collimation (closer and closer to focus)

Much older video-astronomy stuff