Post by robrj on Jul 27, 2016 17:26:27 GMT
I kind of wish I had gotten started in video astronomy earlier. It would have saved me a bunch of money on eyepieces. I have 4 Baader Hyperions and 4 Explore Scientific eyepieces (two 82° and two 100°) that I haven't really touched since I started using the cameras. However, My first viewing of video astronomy was a turn-off. The guy had one of the older analog cameras on M42. It was so blown out and blocky looking, it looked terrible. I remember thinking "Why does he like that? It looks better in the eyepiece." So I stayed with the visual route. I bought a bigger dob and built my observation deck. My little 130SLT was pretty much collecting dust. My wife wanted me to sell it but it was her Christmas gift to me in 2014 and it was also my first telescope.
Astrophography seemed pretty cool but the time involved and the expense of the gear and software made it a non-starter for me. I couldn't see myself spending hours on a computer trying to tweak out an image. After about a year, I started seeing threads and articles about a night vision eyepiece. I thought, that sounds pretty cool. The fact that you could see things in a simple scope or even no scope at all, live, intrigued me. But then I looked at the price. Ouch!!! I was browsing around CN and saw the EAA forum. I though "night vision" and went in but noticed that analog and guide cameras were being used to see much deeper. Looking in the gallery thread, they were getting pretty good results. Not at all like what I saw at the star party. I didn't know it at the time that M42 was so dynamic, it's difficult to capture and display in an appealing manner live. Too much exposure and you blow out the central region. Not enough and you don't see as much wispy detail in the clouds. It's interesting but if that guy had pointed the scope at something a little less spectacular than M42, he might have sold me on the technology way back then.
So I started looking into the EAA cameras. I liked the fact that it expanded the reach of the telescope (some equating it to a telescope 3 times larger). I thought about an AVS APU-1 camera (I didn't know about the delivery problems) but I didn't like the whole analog setup, plus it was pretty expensive. I hope this doesn't offend anyone but it seemed, just from looking at it, like dated technology and kludgy for being so expensive (bnc connectors!). It looked like something that was built in a garage. Then I looked at the Dobcam by Mallincam. It seemed like it might be a good fit because I could slip it down into the focuer of my telescopes but it was still pretty expensive. Plus, there wasn't much information about doing video astronomy with my telescope. I looked up info and ran across an Atik Infinity video that recommended buying a camera based on it's image scale. If the image scale wasn't right, according to the video, the stars would come out blocky (one of the things I didn't like at the star party example). For my scopes, the Dobcam's pixel size was not the best, okay in the dob, too big in the 130SLT.
I considered also the Revolution Imager. My searches and Ken's videos showed me that even though it was analog, it was still capable of quality images. And the price was right. The field of view was very restrictive. My 130SLT's goto wasn't that great so I wanted a camera with as large of a field of view as I could get. So I added a camera section to my eyepiece spreadsheet that would show me the image scale range for my scopes for each camera I was interested in and highlight the ones that were a good fit. I also had it show me the field of view so I could pick a camera with as wide of a field of view as possible. After much research and web searching (some might say analysis paralysis), I decided on the ASI185MC. It was similar to the 224MC but had a wider view. And the infocus requirement on the ZWO cameras didn't seem that bad. It was simple to use, one cable to the computer. When I got that camera, I was hooked.
Even with the wider view, I was still having difficulty getting some objects in the eyepiece so I bought an Orion 50mm guidescope with the intention of getting a cheap camera for use as an electronic finder. The red dot finder was okay for brighter stars but not much help for dimmer ones. Fortunately, I won an Ultrastar-C in a raffle at OPT's SCAE (Southern California Astronomy Expo). It is a much better camera than the 185MC so I moved that to finderscope/widefield duty.
Since I've focused on Video Astronomy, even my wife is more interested in it. She wants to learn how to set things up. She thought it was cool when I first started but visual seems to get more disappointing and less spectacular as you get more experienced. You're always trying to see fainter and fainter things. I used to show her a galaxy in my eyepiece and all I would get from her was "That's a dud!" She was used to seeing spectacular images like the Orion Nebula. So a fuzzy spot didn't inspire much awe. After using the camera for observing, she's much more impressed with the beauty that's out there.
Astrophography seemed pretty cool but the time involved and the expense of the gear and software made it a non-starter for me. I couldn't see myself spending hours on a computer trying to tweak out an image. After about a year, I started seeing threads and articles about a night vision eyepiece. I thought, that sounds pretty cool. The fact that you could see things in a simple scope or even no scope at all, live, intrigued me. But then I looked at the price. Ouch!!! I was browsing around CN and saw the EAA forum. I though "night vision" and went in but noticed that analog and guide cameras were being used to see much deeper. Looking in the gallery thread, they were getting pretty good results. Not at all like what I saw at the star party. I didn't know it at the time that M42 was so dynamic, it's difficult to capture and display in an appealing manner live. Too much exposure and you blow out the central region. Not enough and you don't see as much wispy detail in the clouds. It's interesting but if that guy had pointed the scope at something a little less spectacular than M42, he might have sold me on the technology way back then.
So I started looking into the EAA cameras. I liked the fact that it expanded the reach of the telescope (some equating it to a telescope 3 times larger). I thought about an AVS APU-1 camera (I didn't know about the delivery problems) but I didn't like the whole analog setup, plus it was pretty expensive. I hope this doesn't offend anyone but it seemed, just from looking at it, like dated technology and kludgy for being so expensive (bnc connectors!). It looked like something that was built in a garage. Then I looked at the Dobcam by Mallincam. It seemed like it might be a good fit because I could slip it down into the focuer of my telescopes but it was still pretty expensive. Plus, there wasn't much information about doing video astronomy with my telescope. I looked up info and ran across an Atik Infinity video that recommended buying a camera based on it's image scale. If the image scale wasn't right, according to the video, the stars would come out blocky (one of the things I didn't like at the star party example). For my scopes, the Dobcam's pixel size was not the best, okay in the dob, too big in the 130SLT.
I considered also the Revolution Imager. My searches and Ken's videos showed me that even though it was analog, it was still capable of quality images. And the price was right. The field of view was very restrictive. My 130SLT's goto wasn't that great so I wanted a camera with as large of a field of view as I could get. So I added a camera section to my eyepiece spreadsheet that would show me the image scale range for my scopes for each camera I was interested in and highlight the ones that were a good fit. I also had it show me the field of view so I could pick a camera with as wide of a field of view as possible. After much research and web searching (some might say analysis paralysis), I decided on the ASI185MC. It was similar to the 224MC but had a wider view. And the infocus requirement on the ZWO cameras didn't seem that bad. It was simple to use, one cable to the computer. When I got that camera, I was hooked.
Even with the wider view, I was still having difficulty getting some objects in the eyepiece so I bought an Orion 50mm guidescope with the intention of getting a cheap camera for use as an electronic finder. The red dot finder was okay for brighter stars but not much help for dimmer ones. Fortunately, I won an Ultrastar-C in a raffle at OPT's SCAE (Southern California Astronomy Expo). It is a much better camera than the 185MC so I moved that to finderscope/widefield duty.
Since I've focused on Video Astronomy, even my wife is more interested in it. She wants to learn how to set things up. She thought it was cool when I first started but visual seems to get more disappointing and less spectacular as you get more experienced. You're always trying to see fainter and fainter things. I used to show her a galaxy in my eyepiece and all I would get from her was "That's a dud!" She was used to seeing spectacular images like the Orion Nebula. So a fuzzy spot didn't inspire much awe. After using the camera for observing, she's much more impressed with the beauty that's out there.