Hi!

I’m really impressed by your video here. I want to do the same this weekend and was a little bit disappointed on how poor DSLRs are for planets compared to webcams, or cams like DMK41 etc. But your video shows me that it’s possible to take good pictures/videos

I have a few quick questions please – you’ve done this on a altazimuth mount? like the 8 inch Newton (Dobson) I have?

What were the settings for the video? I have a Canon EOS 600D – which would be better – more resolution (full hd) but less fps or lower resolution and more fps? I hope that it’s not a problem that my cam records mov files instead of avi files.

did you use eyepice projection or a barlow? and how long was your source video for registax? sooo many questions

But when I see some images in Internet I always hope that the 600D was not a mistake to buy.

Thanks in advance , Best regards, Michael

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Hi Michael,

A DSLR camera can also take good high quality videos like a DMK camera, at least in the case of my Canon EOS 450d using a free software called eos_movrec you will find in Internet. This software makes AVI files.

I guess Canon EOS 600d also lets you apply this technique.

This video Saturn video was recorded using a robotic altazimuth mount, that comes with Celestron C5 Nextstar telescope.

Sometimes I use a barlow, and other times eyepiece projection if barlow is not enough. Barlow is good for lunar pictures but not eyepiece projection, only useful at planets, due to its wild field curvature, spoiling the borders of the image.

This picture is a 4-pane mosaic ensambled with free software Fitswork 4.40. Every pane is a 10 minutes exposition through a 55mm lens attached to a Canon EOS 450d (Rebel XSi) DSLR camera, mounted over a motorized equatorial mount, Sky Watcher EQ6.

A full resolution picture is available at AweSky

Aristarchus is a large impact crater on the Moon, is in the northwest of the nearside of the Moon. It is considered the brightest of the large formations on the lunar surface, its albedo is nearly double that of most other geographical spots. The crater is bright enough to be visible to the naked eye and is stunning when viewed through a large telescope. It is also easy to identify when most of the lunar surface is illuminated by reflection of light on Earth.

The crater is located on the southeast edge of the Aristarchus Plateau, an area that contains several high volcanic features, such as wrinkling rimes. This area is known for it have been detected in a significant number of transient lunar phenomena of nature as well as by recent emissions gas radon to be measured by the spacecraft Lunar Prospector.

I think M42 is a good target to measure periodic error in RA movement due to its near 0 degrees declination.

In order to show the drift, I stacked the shots without drift correction using a free software called startrails that gets the brightest pixels per shot, obtaining that way the best startrail you can achieve.

To measure the length of the drift, I requested a single shot solved plate from astrometry.net. They provide an exact width in arcminutes of the field. Then, I divide the width field by the width in pixels of my DSLR camera sensor, obtaining the resolution per pixel in arcseconds (a number close to 1 arcsecond/pixel for a 1,200 mm effective focal length telescope).

Then I measure the height of RA drift pattern with my regular post-processing free software, Fitswork4, and multiply that value by the previous resolution.

That is the way I have found that my EQ6 mount drifts around 40 arcseconds in RA movement. Dividing total exposure by the number of cycles (top peak to lower peak) I got the elapsed time needed to fulfill the periodic error: around 6 minutes long.

It was taken on 2011-03-06 02h10mUT using a DBK 21AU04.AS Imaging Source CCD camera. Planet was recorded in a different exposition through a video stacked (shift and add) using Registax free software.

Check out the JPL simulation matching the picture above.

Near Mare Crisium there is another big area called Palus Somni (below), that is visible in this picture made with an amateur telescope. The big and bright crater in the middle is Proclus:

The telescope used is a Celestron Nexstar 5SE and the camera is a Canon EOS 450d (Rebel XSi) DSLR. The picture actually is a mosaic made of two panes.

Tests were made using the same camera to capture video and similar weather conditions both nights. I took in both cases a video of the planet Saturn when reaching the meridian, its maximum altitude. Celestron C5 perform flawlessly because I could get a sharp view of Saturn and its ring at 500x magnification. Takahashi also let me reach that high powers with a crisp result. C5′s focuser is very precise, but Takahashi’s is even more being a rack and pinion system. Focusing the FS 102 was very pleasant due to its smoothness and accuracy. Probably a better contrast in visual images delivered by refractor telescopes also gave it an advantage here.

Trying to resolve fine details, in both telescopes I could see the shadow of Saturn over the rings clearly. Here it is the final picture after applying Registax and Fitswork4 to both videos.

I’d like to share these two videos with anybody interested in playing with them:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/tqkri1z5z4pw8ge/Saturn-Takahashi-FS-102-F40-2011-02-06-divx.avi

http://www.mediafire.com/file/jbu38q5ucq9diwz/Jupiter-Takahashi-FS-102-F40-2011-02-06-divx.avi

Fringe color filters are able to cut almost completely the secondary spectrum on images taken through telescopes that yield chromatic aberrations, like an achromatic refractor.  Here is an example of the difference between an picture of Jupiter taken through a fringe color filter (left) and a similar picture taken without that filter (right).

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Postprocessing done using PSP9 and Fitswork4.

NGC 7000 is an emission nebula in the constellation Cygnus, near Deneb (α Cygni), also called the North American Nebula. The dark central region called the Gulf of Mexico, as in some astronomical plates for many years resembled that region of America.

Nebula NGC 7000 is the largest covering an area equivalent to the full moon, but its low surface brightness does not normally visible to the naked eye (though, in a dark, using a UHC filter can be seen without optical aid) NGC 7000 and the nearby Pelican Nebula (IC 5070) are part of the same interstellar cloud of ionized hydrogen (HII region). The dark area in the center is a very dense region of interstellar material in front of the nebula and which absorbs light of it, giving the group its characteristic shape.

It is not known with precision the distance that separates us from NGC 7000, neither the star responsible for the ionization of hydrogen that results in the emission of light. Supposing Deneb is the star that illuminates the nebula NGC 7000 then the distance to Earth is on the order of 1800 light years.

Pluto is a dwarf planet in the solar system, part of a double planetary system with its satellite Charon. It has a highly eccentric orbit inclined to the ecliptic, which runs until closer at perihelion inside the orbit of Neptune. The Pluto-Charon system has two moons: Nix and Hydra. These are celestial bodies that share the same category.

It was discovered on February 18, 1930 by American astronomer Clyde William Tombaugh (1906-1997) from the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, and as the ninth and smallest planet in the Solar System by the International Astronomical Union and public opinion from then until 2006, but their group of planets in the solar system was always the subject of controversy among astronomers.

Its great distance from the Sun and the Earth, coupled with its small size, prevents shine below the magnitude 13.8 in its best moments (orbital perihelion and opposition), so it can be spotted only with telescopes bigger than 200 mm aperture (although there are people that says it can be spotted through apertures of 125 mm), photographically or CCD camera. It appears as star-looking, yellow, featureless point of light (apparent diameter of less than 0.1 arcsec).

In doing astrophotography, people use to spend a lot of money in equipment. It is important not to fall into the elitist apochromatic myth if you want to save some money.

I took a single 30 seconds shot to Pleiades open cluster (M45) using my 6-inch Sky-Watcher achromatic refractor that costs around 1,000 US$. Then I used a 6-inch apochromatic Takahashi TOA-150 that costs around 10,000 US$ to take an equivalent shot on the same field.

Resulting images speak by themselves. Obviously achromatic refractor shows a blue halo around stars, due to chromatic aberration. Nevertheless, a simple post-processing technique can remove the halo, obtaining a similar image to apochromatic’s.

Now, the question is: Is it worth paying the extra 9,000 US$?

It is estimated that its nucleus has a size between 1200 and 1600 meters, according to recent observations of the Spitzer Space Telescope (August 2008): its albedo, very small, is close to 0.028 as it is covered with very dark carbonaceous bodies probably hydrocarbons. The mass is estimated around 3 × 10 ^ 11 kg.

In its approach to the Sun of 2010 is visible in the constellations of Cassiopeia, Perseus and Auriga, but could be visible to the naked eye in mid-October of that year from places with dark skies: it reaches its minimum distance from our planet on October 20th standing at only 0.12 Astronomical Units. A few days later, on October 28th, passes through the perihelion located a little over 157 million miles from our star.

In their approach the year 2010 this image was obtained through a 6-inch refractor telescope.

Its next step takes place on April 2017.

The phenomenon is called opposition, and occurs when a planet is located exactly opposite to the Sun in the sky, meaning, the same side of Earth’s orbit about the sun. In such cases, the distance between the two planets is minimal. The oppositions between Earth and Jupiter occur every 13 months.

However, as the orbits of both planets are not perfectly round nor perfectly concentric, these approaches are not always the same. There is a “better” and a “worse” opposition. And the gap between the two planets varies from 591 to 676 millions of kilometers. Consequently, the brightness and apparent size of Jupiter also varies.

The current opposition of Jupiter is excellent, with the planet at nearly 592 million of kilometers from Earth. Equivalent to about 1,500 times the distance to the Moon, but Earth and Jupiter can not get much closer than that. The last time Jupiter was so close to Earth in October 1963 was 47 years ago. And it will not happen again until September 2022.

Here it is the full frame, with a lot of stars in the field and great detail:

http://www.awesky.com/Deep+Sky/Misc/Capella+-+Alpha+Aurigae/

http://alpo-j.asahikawa-med.ac.jp/kk10/j100925z.htm
http://alpo-j.asahikawa-med.ac.jp/kk10/j100922z.htm

And these are the images:

Their joint magnitude V-band (green filter) is equal to 8.80. Its real form is possibly a bipolar nebula seen with an inclination of 30 ° from its axis, and calculated that it has been expanding around 1600 years.

From their radial velocity, -19.2 km/s, it follows that approaches Earth more than 69120 km/h: this rate is caused by the combination of the sun’s orbital speed around the nucleus of the Milky Way and the speed of the Earth itself.

M57 is illuminated by a white dwarf at its center of visual magnitude 15.8.

This picture is a single shot of 30 seconds exposition through a SkyWatcher 6 inches refractor telescope at prime focus. Fitsworks4 was used to remove a bit the background noise.

The comparison throws some interesting conclusions:

1.- A 150mm lens gives more resolution than a 54mm lens. Stars are fainter in the 6 inches refractor picture.

2.- The light captured by a 54mm lens in 60 seconds is nearly equivalent to the one captured by a 150mm lens in 15 seconds. Nebulosity appears practically equal in brightness in the two pictures. The lower image is a full frame, meanwhile the upper one is cropped at 25%.

Both images were taken using an unmodded Canon DSLR camera, EOS 450D (or Rebel XTi) and an EQ6 equatorial mount.

The image is the result of 2 minutes of exposition through the Cluster camera of Bradford Robotic telescope. The Nova is located at 6 degrees from Rigel (Orion). There is attached a map of the area, in which it is visible that the Nova is not registered in the chart.

And here it is the same area as viewed with more magnification through the Celestron C14 main telescope at Bradford Observatory. The image was taken on 2009-12-25, so several days after the previous image, but Eridanus Nova remains clearly visible.

The original image from which this perspective has been obtained was a 4 minutes exposure with a 300mm telephoto lens and a DSLR Canon EOS 450d (Rebel XTi) camera.

I’d like to know your opinion on these things and also the quality of the focuser. Is there much flex in the trusses? Have you been able to attain crisp clear focus? Would you recommend this scope, or to rather spend an extra $1000 to get a similar sized Discovery scope?

Thanks!

-Joey

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Collimation is an important issue when observing through Meade Lightbridge 16″. Mainly for planets and Moon, because a good collimation gives much better images at high magnification. When moving the telescope, it is usual to get discollimation, so every time you move it, you firstly have to collimate it before observing.

Another disadvantage of this telescope is its weight. It weights a lot and it is not easy to move from one place to another.

Nevertheless starfield views are incredible due to its high aperture, mainly under dark skies. It becomes very easy to observe deep sky objects. It is impressive to observe Dumbell nebula at 200x.

To attain crisp clear focus is very difficult when observing planets or the Moon due to atmospheric turbulence. 16 inches of aperture are very sensitive to turbulence.

I would recommend the telescope if you are planing to be observing always at the same place. It is a very cheap telescope taking into account its aperture.

I cannot talk about Discovery telescope, because I have never watched through one of them.

Regards,

This is a 15 seconds exposure through a Meade Lightbridge 16-inch, a Dobson with no tracking, but fortunately Polaris moves very slowly through its small circumpolar path, due to its proximity to north pole in the sky. The camera used was a Canon EOS 450d, also known as Rebel XTi. The method employed was an eyepiece projection using a 14mm Meade Series 5000.

Here it is a comparison image:

“Hello, I have 16×50 binoculars and a 7.1 mega pixel camera with 4x zoom and I’ve done what you said and looked at the Moon and the images are no where near as close as yours. The image blurs once the picture is taken of the moon and doesn’t seem no where near as close to the moon as yours. Please help.”

I would like to share the answer just in case someone is also interested.

Answer:

16x and 4x should mean a final 64x optical zoom. That is as much as when seeing through a telescope. If you are capturing frames at 7 MegaPixels this is to say they are around 3,000×2,500 pixels in size. When creating a video you need a final image size of 1,000×700 as much, so if you crop a frame of 3,000×2,500 into a final frame of 1,000×700, it would be equivalent to apply a 3x additional zoom to the image, because (1,000×700) * 3 is more o less equal to 3,000×2,500.

Bottom line: do a crop to your 7 Mpx image and you will get an effective 182x magnification.

Respecting the blur, don’t panic. The blur may be a product of the weather conditions, or a thermal issue in your binoculars.

Try to avoid make photos of the Moon when it is located directly over the roof of a neighbour. This is a very frequent source of blurring problems.

Try also to cool down your binoculars before the observation, trying to get a thermal equilibrium with the outdoor temperature.

Be sure that your digicam is functioning with a infinite focus mode. The focus must be achieved manually using the binocular focuser.

If you have the option of taking continuous shots, use it. The majority of the images recorded may be blurred, but sometimes you may get one more clear and sharp.

Well. I hope this helps you to get sharper images.

Good luck.

At least in my laptop, several codecs are available to use for the video output. Here it is an example of what results can achieve this software:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JREF4QtyfUQ

Posidonius measures 95 km in diameter. The second biggest crater (a bit ghostly) in the picture is Chacornac, just below Posidonius. Inside it is visible a small craterlet called Chacornac A (it measures 5 km in diameter).

The third biggest crater of the picture is Daniell (31 km wide) located in the upper middle side. Its shape is not circular, but oval. This is the cause of a strange effect in perspective when comparing it with the craters nearby.

My setup is a 6-inch telescope, but I bet it is possible to observe it comfortably with a 4-inch refractor.

The bright and overexposed crater is Proclus. I have to work harder the dynamic range issue next time.

Swift and Peirce are the pair of craters in the upper side of the picture, near the lunar terminator. Below Peirce should be visible a 2 kms wide craterlet, but unfortunately my picture cannot yield such a resolution. According to a quick calculation, 3 kms is the smallest visible feature in theis image, and that corresponds to 1.5 arcseconds. A bit far still to the maximum theoretical resolution of a 6-inch telescope (that is around 0.7 arcseconds)

Yerkes is the big ghostly crater in the right side. Apparently there is a central peak in its center. I have been looking for a confirmation of the existence of that peak, but I haven’t found any reliable source where it is mentioned. Any hint here, I would be thankful…

The resulting tracking is not at all perfect. You may see Jupiter swinging around the screen. It is important to capture the data at a fast shutter speed (1/100 sec.) to avoid motion blur in every frame because the planet is always dancing.

In spite of this movement, the results after stacking are very good. Here I show this really simple system and the resulting yesterday’s Jupiter with the webcam:

As you can see the Manual-Crazy-Tracking is a very simple system that consists in a rubber band attached to the tripod handle. If you try to track manually directly pushing the tripod handle, the shaking is excessive and you would need a very very fast shutter speed to get some useful data. The rubber band is necessary to reduce vibrations and increase the shift movement control.

At beginning Jupiter is located in the center of the field of view with no need to any corrections. As long as it drifts due to its sidereal movement you will have to pull using the rubber band in order to keep it in the center of the screen (it is supposed you have a laptop there capturing and showing images from the webcam). This way you may have Jupiter centered in the screen for a long time. You will have time to focus (left hand pulling the rubber band and right hand tweaking the focuser) and time to expose.

It is 4x resampled via Registax Mitchell and PS. After resampled I can spot more details in bands and polar zones.

As always I used the 6-inch no-EQ mounted newtonian reflector, the 14mm eyepiece doing afocal projection over the Canon EOS 450d (Rebel XTi) body and recording video using “EOS Camera Movie Record” free software. Three times Jupiter crossed over the field of view. Registax and VirtualDub added and stacked the footage properly.

The picture was taken with my digital reflex body (EOS Rebel XTi) and using the video capture software that converts it into a high quality webcam.

In this same picture I include a Jupiter from the day before yesterday. The lack of atmospheric turbulence gave me a chance to get closer to the maximum theoretical resolution of a 6-inch telescope.

After selecting and appending, I used Photoshop to apply a hard sharpen, and several other filters getting different final results. Here they are.

The picture was taken at 19 days of lunation, that is 4 days after full Moon. This is the best timing to get sharp images of the crater’s walls’ shadows. The image is an integration of 27 subframes, each one taken at 9 Megapixels single shots with point-and-shoot digicam Casio Exilim EX-FS10.

The information obtained from a sensor device is pretty blurry, lacking of contrast and noisy as hell when shooting through a telescope or some other instrument with magnification. Atmosphere also conspire against us, because actually it is not as invisible as we thought at first. Windy nights or thermal issues may spoil our footage. That’s way disappointing. But there is a big pro when computer assisted image restoration shows up.

Here it is an example. Jupiter as recorded with a 6-inch telescope. Second step is the result of applying Registax 5 to the sequence. And step 3 is the final touch of sharp, color and contrast enhancement in Photoshop or any other similar software.

To take this image I used the Canon EOS 450d, Rebel XTI DSLR camera recording video subframes and later I stacked them up with Registax 5. Some small tweaks on Paint Shop Pro 9 and ready.

In order to get a sharp image I used a Van Citter deconvolution process.

* Casio Exilim EX-FS10

* Canon EOS 450D (Rebel XTi)

* Webcam Philips ToUcam Pro

As you may appreciate in the following picture, the GRS (Great Red Spot) is clearly visible near the center of the planet. Several details are visible in the Jupiter’s bands. The image was obtained with a non-tracking Newtonian 6-inch telescope, a 14mm eyepiece, a Casio Exilim EX-FS10 digital camera that recorded 165 subframes. Registax 5 dealt with the alignment and stacking process. Dyadic Wavelets were applied to get contrast and details. PSP9 did the post-processing. The footage was taken exactly at 2009-07-28 03:33 UT.

Here several post-processing results are shown. The first one is that I like more.

With Registax 5 I stacked 150 subframes and then applied dyadic wavelets. Some retouching with Paint Shop Pro 9 and fractal zooming under Photoshop.

The footage corresponds to 2009-07-26 at 01:44 UT.

The down is the small field of view because the CCD sensor has not so many pixels like a digital camera. To find the target with a non-tracking mount is difficult. Here we see a prime focus shot that shows the Galilean moons and a Barlow 2x show showing the horizontal bands of the planet.

Globular clusters M13 and M92 are there in the photo like 2 stars.

Here it is a picture I took tonight with a digital pocket camera through a 14mm eyepiece and a 150 mm newtonian reflector telescope with no-tracking system.

To get the dark frame I do some image arithmetic with Paint Shop Pro 9: I choose 3 or 4 distant subframes and compute them using “darkest” option. This way, stars become to fade until disappearing.

With Paint Shop Pro 9 and batch processor I apply a barrel lens distortion of 17 (empirical value to correct a 18mm focal lens like Canon’s) to every subframe and also to the dark frame.

Once got the dark frame DeepSkyStacker is needed to stack the single subframes and substract the dark frame. The sideral drift of the field is automatically compensated with the intelligent algorithm that DeepSkyStacker provides.

The resulting image is surprising taking into account this is an urban sky.

The image is the result of adding 20 subframes of 15 seconds of exposure each one at ISO 1600. After applying a barrel distortion filter to compensate lens distortion the images become integrable. Using Nebulosity 2 software I could compensate the sideral motion of the sky.

The quality of the image is very low. The point here is not quality but the successful of avoiding light pollution in a widefield Milky Way shot. The area corresponds to the border of Lyra constellation towards Aquila constellation.

Bullialdus is the big crater at upper left side, in the shadows. Pitatus is centered in the lower side. Inside several details are visible: a peak and an inner rim. Rupus Recta is the large straight wall on the right side.

This picture was obtained after stacking (with Registax 5) 20 single frames taken with Casio Exilim pocket digital camera in afocal projection through an eyepiece using a Meade Lightbridge 16-inch dobsonian telescope.

This picture was taken as the integration of 30 subframes stacked in Registax 5, from a video made with Casio Exilim EX-Z80 afocal on Meade Lightbridge 16-inches big Dobsonian, with no tracking.

Of course, the best solution is to stop using the 18 mm focal length for shift-and-add astrophotography. Instead longer focal is advisable like 35 mm, where the lens does not show any significant distortion in the field of view.

Another advice to get a sharp focus and pinpoint stars with Canon EF-S 18-55mm lens is to always use a focal ratio no less than F:5 and no more than F:10.  Under F:5 the lens coma aberration would mess the stars near the image border and over F:10 the diffraction would create big Airy patterns instead of pinpoint stars.

I have said above that “it is important to get images with no field curvature to do shift-and-add astrophotography”. I must correct it. Sky pictures are not like an image of a wall. A wall is a plane surface, but the sky is not. Actually, the sky is an sphere, the celestial sphere, that is constantly rotating around Polaris. So, the correct way to add images is not converting them to plane field, but to spherical field in the right proportion.

I have told you that pincushion lens distortion corrects the field. That is truth, but it is not appropriated to process non-tracking subframes. The subframes must firstly be corrected to show an spherical field. So the right filter to apply is indeed a barrel lens distortion, increasing this way the natural barrel that comes with the lens.

It is easy to verify this, just trying to overlap 2 distant subframes. The first and the last of the session may be optimal. Only after applying a barrel of 17 in Paint Shop Pro I could overlap successfully the subframes, preserving angles and distances between stars.

Yesterday I was also trying to focus my DSLR Canon EOS Rebel XTi (EOS 450d) through my Meade Lightbridge 16″, but it was not possible. I haven’t still bought any T-adapter, because I was not sure it could reach the focus. Indeed it doesn’t reach it even without any adapter.

Maybe changing the focuser to a zero profile one could work. Or maybe not.

There is a trick to find out where the focal plane is exactly. When seeing the Moon, remove any eyepiece from the focuser and project the light into a cardboard perpendicular to the focuser axis. When the Moon gets clear and focused, there it is exactly located the focal plane at prime focus.

Knowing the distance from the CCD camera to the T-adapter it is possible to find out if a low profile focuser could reach the focus for prime focus astrophotography.

In the left side of the image, it is visible a satellite of Saturn. It is Titan, with 9 magnitude. Over it, a bit at right there is almost visible another one, Rhea of magnitude 10. Visually it was observable another one aligned to Titan and Rhea, but it is not visible in the image. It was Dione with 11 magnitude.

Luckily this image shows the gap between foreside ring and its rear part. The image effective resolution according to my calculations is 1 arcsecond. Two cloud bands are visible one in the north hemisphere and the other in the south.

I would like to break the 1 arcsecond resolution barrier, but I don’t know if it is possible with this telescope. Theoretically it delivers a 0.3 arcsecond resolution because it has 400mm of mirror diameter.

I have a Dobsonian Meade Lightbridge 16-inch and I am also trying to do astrophotography with it. This is a challenge. The Moon is the easiest target for a Dob. Tracking is not compulsory to take good images of the Moon. Next target may be planets. Here it is my last image of Saturn through my Dob:

http://computerphysicslab.wordpress.com/2009/05/14/saturn-improved/

Next target would be bright stars and clusters. And the most difficult target of all is deep-sky astrophotography. With no tracking system you have to use some tricks to get deep sky images. I am using shift-and-add technique with moderate results.

My focuser does not let me to use my DSLR camera at prime focus, so I am using afocal method through low power eyepieces. You don’t have to spend much money to do this kind of photographic experiments. Patience and effort sometimes give more satisfaction that a lot of money expended in sophisticated equipment.

Someone has told me to buy a “M42 to EOS adapter”, but I am not sure if engaging two adapters in serial, would let me focus infinity afterward.

So, I am looking for an adapter that let me match correctly this telephoto lens to my Canon EOS 450d. Here is a picture showing the mount and the old adapter. Any hint would help me for sure.

Zoom at maximum, that is 55 mm of focal length. No tracking, only static tripod to avoid blur.

I hope you like it …

The picture was shot tonight through a non-motorized 150mm (6 inches) reflector using high definition video capture with Casio Exilim EX-FS10.

The gallery is online since last week and we are doing efforts in promoting it and populating the photographic slots available. We would like your organization to make some reference to our project, not only to get new visits, but also to get the people interested known about this project.

Check it out at http://www.awesky.com/

Thanks in advance.

Thanks for posting that cool vid of the 16″ Lightbridge. I just spoke with someone at a telescope store who said they were looking to get rid of their 12″ Lightbridge because they said it is very shaky when viewing, and gives an unstable image.

I just was in a shop which had an 8″ Lightbridge and I would describe it as very smooth and rock solid.

Can I ask you if you’ve had any shaky or bouncing issues with your 16″?

I’m thinking of the 12″ for myself!

Thanks, PK

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Meade Lighbridge does not come with slow motions for altazimuth movements. If you compare the movement of the Lightbridge with that of a tripod mounted refractor, for example, probably the tripod mounted is going to be much precise.

Nevertheless, it depends too much on what kind of observation are you planning. Watching the Moon, Lightbridge may became very smooth and exact in movement, because you always have a bright lunar surface all over the field of view and the movement you apply to the optical tube is constantly compared to the drift as seen through the eyepiece. On extensive deep sky objects, the same happens. The most difficult objects to track are planets, because the surrounding field of view is pitchblack and you lose any references once the planet gets out of the field.

If you try to use high power eyepieces with small apparent field of view with a planet, the lack of equatorial mount and a sideral motor drive may become a nightmare. In this cases, my advice is to always use widefield eyepieces and reduce the magnification if necessary.

To get a smooth movement it is important to balance correctly the optical tube, adding some magnets at the bottom side of the tube, near the mirror. Do not forget to check that the base of the dobsonian mount is not tilted. Following these advices, the telescope will have a very smooth movement in both axis, as shown in my video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWUGCk0wN24

The tracking becomes more difficult as longer the focal length. So Meade Lightbridge 16″ is the most difficult to track, because a slight movement in your hands transforms in a great movement in the field. Lower aperture telescopes, have less focal distance and apparent movements in the field are smoother.

If you are planning the use of the telescope for observational purposes, you won’t have any problems with the smoothness of the tracking once you get trained in several sessions. If you plan to do astrophotography, dobsonian movement may become a problem. Nevertheless, I do astrophotography of Moon, planets, and stars through my Meade Lightbridge 16″. You may check it out at my webpage: http://computerphysicslab.wordpress.com/

My final advice is: if you have previously be using regularly a smaller scope doing astronomy, you won’t find any problem using any of Meade Lightbridge series. Collimation is an important point to deal with in this scopes, but the quality of its elements is superb, and the price is really good.

With Paint Shop Pro I subtracted the background gradient due to dusk light. There is visible a pine branch below.

I signed up and uploaded the photography two days ago. The approval has been fast. I had to fill a profile form as shown here: Profile.

This image was taken as usual, through Vixen 12×80 binoculars and with the Casio Exilim EX-Z80 pocket digital camera. I used only green channel data, because it was the sharpest.

Sidus Ludoviciana is the faint star between Mizar and Alcor. Mizar is the brightest one, which in fact is a binary system: Mizar A & B, with an angular separation of 14 arcseconds.

Photo taken with the dobsonian reflector Meade Lightbridge 16″, using afocal eyepiece proyection. Here we see 222 shots of 0.5 seconds of exposure stacked. No tracking, shift-and-add method.

The truth is that what I could see through binoculars was much more brilliant and detailed than the next image by far. I think my Casio Exilim digital pocket camera is a bit insensible to dim light …

Trapezium is visible as a spot. The 20″ separation among its components is too close for my binoculars to resolve it. Remember that 20″ is the apparent diameter of Saturn.

* Image Stacking: Registax, PhotoAcute Studio, Nebulosity and DeepSkyStacker.

* Retouching: Paint Shop Pro and Photoshop.

* Zooming: onOne Genuine Fractals.

* Sharpening: Maximum entropy deconvolution with AstroArt, and wavelets with Registax.

* Noise removal: Neat Image.

* Video edition: VirtualDub, Adobe Premiere and EasyBMPtoAVI.

* Night sky renderers: Stellarium, StarryNight, Google Earth & WikiSky.