Gallery XXIII

On 12/26/03 I went out on my bedroom deck. and attached a 25mm "C" mount lens to the a new Stellacam II and shot images of constellations, or rather parts of them! I experimented with several settings of frame integration, gain and contrast. For most I used 50% gain, hi gamma (contrast), 32 frame addition (1 second). These were "undriven". I had the Stellacam screwed onto an ordinary photographic tripod. I shot 30 - 1 seond frames and added these "on the fly" with Astrovideo 3.1.5 to produce a 32 bit "fits" file. These were then manipulated with GIMP (freeware).

 I was focusing at 32 frame sense up (1 second exposure). I pointed to a bright star, focused on that and then set off to image.

I started in Orion. I shot many variations of contrast (no,lo,hi) and frame rate (32, 64,128,256). I thought that 256 trailed a little. And 64-256 were "too bright" but I may need to "reprocess these". For most things I liked 32 frames, 50% gain, hi gamma.

Orion's belt, 32 frames sense up, 50% gain, hi gamma, 30 total frames

(32 frames = on chip integration of 1/30 sec video frames- i.e. on chip integration - here about a 1 second long image - this would be the "sense up" in Stellacam EX parlance) (gain = gain control setting) (gamma = contrast setting) (total frames = # of 1 second frames added in Astrovideo - to make an effective 30 second exposure)

Orion's belt, 32 frames sense up, 100% gain, lo gamma, 30 total frames

Orion's belt, 128 frames sense up, 50% gain, 1o gamma, 30 total frames

The Pleiades 32 frames sense up, 100% gain, lo gamma, 30 total frames

Canis Major 32 frames sense up, 50% gain, hi gamma, 30 total frames

The Double Cluster 32 frames sense up, 100% gain, lo gamma, 30 total frames

I think its just to the left at the center of the image.

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