Telescope Reviews: Be it ever so humble...

Last night I finally got to capture some video images from my StellaCam. I had done some tinkering with image capture back in fall of 2007 to make sure it was a worthwhile endeavor before building an observatory, but last night was the first time I had everything officially in place outdoors as well as indoors.

Not having the wireless remote for the camera yet (due first week of August), I would have to run back and forth several times to change settings between on-screeen navigation exposures and actual image capture exposures. That wasn't going to happen. I opted for "set it and forget it". I had the camera set at 8.5 second exposures (maximum setting on the dial) and medium gain (2.5 big ticks on the dial). The SCT hand controller was connected to my laptop, so I was able to watch the scope slew around via the Sky Map Pro star chart program. The PHD autoguider program was showing me a field larger than the camera at .5 second intervals, so navigation and centering of objects was a snap. Plus, autoguiding in the Milky Way region, there sure are a lot of guide stars to pick from!

Everything came together perfectly: remote scope control, video, autoguiding via remotely controlled PC, serial connection to star charts, and image capture after a couple years of dreaming and many months of planning and construction.

I captured object after object with a few notable surpirses. NGC 6888, The Crescent Nebula was just visible onscreen and NGC 6207, the galaxy next to globular cluster M13 showed just as much detail in suburbia as it did with a 20" dob out at Ransom Road. I captured a buch of globular clusters, M3, M13, M92, M56, NGC 6229, M71, planetary nebulae M57 The Ring Nebula, NGC 6826 The Blinking Planetary, and M27 The Dumbell Nebula. I didn't bother with any galaxies due to the limited exposure time and the sky conditions. Right after I got started some clouds rolled through and the sky was never as transparent after that. I also discovered at one point that my images were out of focus, so some of the caps could have been sharper. It was really apparent on M57 which was right up at the zenith when I was observing it so I think I experienced mirror flop (new to me!).

I also tinkered with some rudimentary image stacking and editing with the freeware programs Deepsky Stacker and Irfanview. I took default options and stacked four image captures of M3 in a matter of seconds and saved it to a TIF file. Then used Irfanview to adjust the brightness, contrast, gamma, and sharpness of the final image. I saved it as a JPEG and attached the final image. I'm a happy camper.

This was instant gratification in near real time. I can't wait to see what longer exposures and stacking will do.

Any thoughts as to what may cause the streaking of the brighter stars? It was visible on the video monitor and the PC capture software window.

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Matthew Sherman

StellaCam 3
Celestron NexStar 11 @ f/3.3
Starmaster 12.5"
Starmaster 18"
Tom Osypowski Equatorial Platform
Butterfield East Video Observatory