FreeLists / az-observing / [AZ-Observing] Messing it up with a ToUCam

["Steve Coe" <stevecoe@xxxxxxxxx>]

Howdy folks;

Some years ago David Healy provided SAC with an update of an article he
wrote for Deep Sky Magazine entitled "Astrophotography--Messing it up".  =
He
described a variety of ways to get poor results while trying to =
photograph
the sky.

After an evening with my webcam set up I can promise you that modern
technology still provides plenty of ways to "mess up".  Attempting to do =
a
complex set of actions in the dark is still not easy.  I did get some =
images
with the little ToUCam but it seems that it was fighting me all the way.

I smacked the pier of my scope several times and it twanged for quite a
while and then I found myself wondering why the image on the monitor did =
not
move when I kneed the computer desk.

Several times I forgot to create a new filename for the latest avi movie
file that I was creating.  So, the new movie overwrote and destroyed the
previous movie.

The software I have is quite simple and I kept forgetting to reset the
timing to 10 frames per second and it would reset to 15 fps.  This would
make the faint companion star or satellite of Saturn disappear on the
monitor until I remembered to go to a slower speed frame rate.  Ah,
computers have a mind of their own.

And my favorite, I had "lost" Saturn and was trying to get it back onto =
the
chip in the camera so I could see the image on the monitor.  I took the
camera out of the diagonal and put in my 20mm eyepiece in an effort to
re-center Saturn.  Once I had Saturn at the middle of the field I looked =
at
the monitor and could not understand why the image of Saturn was not
displayed, so I moved the scope up-down and left-right for several =
minutes
until I noticed the camera sitting on top of the pier! =20

Replacing the camera into the star diagonal showed a beautiful planet =
with a
nice set of rings on the monitor.

So, don't think that moving up to a "superior" technology will provide =
the
ability to never "mess it up".  Life ain't like that.

Clear Skies to us all;
Steve Coe =20

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