Webcam astrophotography

Tonight I have been able for the first time to use a webcam for doing astrophotography. The best up of it is the possibility to get a sharp focus looking at the laptop screen while correcting the focus. Besides, the resolution seems to double that of my digital pocket camera with the afocal technique. Up to now I haven’t got full resolution of 640×480 with my webcam, a Philips Toucam Pro (PCVC 740K). The drivers for XP are very naughty. I can only record 320×240 frames so long.

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.

Saturn improved

Saturn is getting hard to be photographed. I have recently bought a low-quality barlow 2x and a ScopeTronix EZ-Pix II. The clouds aren’t giving me many opportunities to see Saturn, but I could find a hole in the sky 2 nights ago. I took a time trying to collimate the dobsonian as better as possible. Nevertheless I couldn’t get a sharp focus. I took video and single frames. After stacking with Registax 5, I have got this image.