FreeLists / az-observing / [AZ-Observing] Re: 2004 All Arizona Messier Marathon

[Jeff Hopkins <phxjeff@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 11:13 -0700 12/12/2003, Stanley A. Gorodenski wrote:
>Just by chance I decided to read my January issue of S&T. They have an
>article on web cams. From reading it, I am not all to sure that the
>impressive photos were taken with off the shelf web cams. My impression,
>from reading the article, is that to get good deep sky images it takes
>considerable modification, the parts costing more than the web cam
>itself. It also appears to involve some technical ability and the
>inclination to make such modifications. What do you know about this
>Jeff? Also, I beleive your Meade CCD is about $700. This is really not
>that expensive and so I am wondering if it would it be worth it, unless
>someone just wants to do it,  to attempt to modify a web cam? I am
>pretty ignorant of this area.
>Stan
>
You are correct about the January S&T article. At least some of those 
pictures were taken with modified web cams. However, the 
modifications are very inexpensive (under $50 for parts - including a 
Petlier cooler, heat sink and fan). There is a modification on some 
to allow longer exposures. If you are handy with a small soldering 
iron and not afraid to take the camera apart, the mods should be very 
straight forward and easy.

The Meade 216XT I have is very outdated. The only feature on it I 
like is the regulated cooling. It uses the same TC-255 chip you can 
buy in an old $20 B&W web cam. It's small and (336 X 242 pixels) as 
opposed top the 640 X 480 pixels of most of the newer web cams. I'm 
about fed up with the 216XT. It is very ornery to use, takes forever 
to get an image (find it, focus it, get the exposure right - figure a 
couple of hours). It may have a problem or it may just be me.

I plan to test the 840k web cam in stages. First , stock with just a 
focal reducer. Then perhaps with a fan, timing mod and lastly with a 
cooler. If I decide to try photometry with it I will probably replace 
the CCD chip with a monochrome equivalent.The beauty of these web 
cams is you can take many images very fast and stack them giving you 
a much higher effective sensitivity. Since most of the M objects are 
not visible from Phoenix due to sky brightness, I may have to wait 
for a dark sky trip to really check it out.

Jeff
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Jeff Hopkins
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