Starry Dave's Window Sill Observatory

AstroKam M37

CHDK AstroKam, Deep Sky Comments Off

Nov 162013

Another shot of M37 taken with a Canon A810 and Nexstar 4SE (alt-az). Stacked in DeepSkyStacker and processed in Star Tools.

Alt-Az Messier 42

CHDK AstroKam, Deep Sky Comments Off

Nov 132013

AstroKam was used in a 2 hour capture session using my Canon A810 mounted on my Nexstar 4SE in alt-az mode.

I used AstroKam’s new Sort routine to pick out the best captures which were stacked in DeepSkyStacker. Star Tools then brought out the details and colors to produce this image. Pretty good for a £50 camera?

AstroKam Trial Images 2013-11-05

CHDK AstroKam Comments Off

Nov 102013

Below are the first trial overnight auto-survey images using AstroKam to control my Canon A810 and Nexstar alt-az mount. Still getting the hang of things but I am pretty pleased considering the camera only cost £50. Click on each detail image to see the original widefield shot. All images stacked in DeepSkyStacker and processed in Star Tools. Note that these images were taken using just the camera lens – no telescope was involved.

M45 Detail

M42

Comet Ison 2013-11-5

M37

CHDK AstroKam, Deep Sky Comments Off

Nov 102013

Here is my latest capture using AstroKam with my Canon A810 looking thru the eyepiece of my Nexstar 4SE in alt-az mode. Stacking in Deep Sky Stacker and processing in Star Tools.

The sky was patchy so I only got 11x 10s lights, 2 darks and 2 biases.

Possible forum security breach

News Comments Off

Jul 282013

I had to close down the forum and foto sharing site because of a possible security breach and constant spam attacks.

The Yahoo user group has therefore been reborn and is available here

http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/window_sill_observatory/

Lunar Flypass with Canon A810

CHDK AstroKam, Moon Comments Off

May 052013

This is a movie I made with my £50 Canon A810 hooked up to my Nexstar 4SE. Best viewed in full screen.

Canon A810 Moon

CHDK AstroKam, Moon Comments Off

May 032013

I have been trying out my £50 Canon A810 camera for astro work. An early trial was to connect it to my Nexstar 4SE scope with a Skywatcher digiscoping bracket and the results were pretty good.

Here is a sample and you can see more of the image by clicking on it.

Banish Newton’s Rings

Tutorials Comments Off

Sep 272012

We had a good discussion on my old Yahoo user group about how to remove Netwon’s Rings from your h-alpha setups. I have condensed the results of our discussion here to help others with this problem.

Newton’s rings are caused by interference arising from internal reflections in your imaging train and look like this.

Newton’s Rings

User Robert suggested that the rings could be eliminated by slightly tilting the camera. I came up with a simple design sketch like so.

Daves Tiltometer Mk II

Users Robert, Mike and Jack then built test versions which seem to work very well. Jack’s version was used to re-image the above view to give this which is a dramatic improvement.