February Meeting

The February 2012 meeting will take place on Tuesday 28th February at 7.30pm in the church hall as usual.

 

There will be a news update, tea-coffee intermission and a talk entitled "Postcards from Cassini", a photographic voyage around Saturn and its moons.

 

 

Everyone is welcome. If you have any difficulties with a telescope or would like some advice then bring your equipment if you like and we can help point you in the right direction during the intermission or after the meeting.

 

See you there!

Jeremy

 

January meeting update

Thanks to everyone who came along to our January meeting and special thanks to Ian for holding the fort as Jeremy was injured and I was away with work. It sounds like it was a successful meeting and the high level is interest we had through our Stargazing LIVE events continued with many more people attending the meeting and hopefully joining the society.

Our next meeting is on 28th February. Keep an eye on the website for more details. 

Chris.

Astrophotography tips

It was great to meet so many people last weekend who are interested in having a go at astrophotography or who are already dabbling.

Below are some useful links to software and hardware that will help you progress:

• Registax - a freeware program that produces stunning images of the moon and planets using webcam video footage
  http://www.astronomie.be/registax/setupregistax6.exe
  
  
• Clamping arrangements to attach a compact digital camera to the eyepiece of a telescope. These can be useful to ensure the optics are aligned properly and held steady. This will allow straightforward imaging of planets and the moon through your telescope.
  http://www.scopesnskies.com/prod/camera-adaptor/univerasal/digiscoping
  
  
• Phillips 880SPC or Phillips Toucam Pro II (SPC900) are excellent cameras for webcam imaging. Unfortunately I can't find any in stock anywhere...but keep your eyes open. Morgan Computers were selling them for £17.90 recently. All you need in addition to the camera is a nose piece and IR cut filter, which can be purchased from many astronomy shops online such as Altair Astro for example ( http://www.altairastro.com/product.php?productid=16449&cat=0&page=1 )
  
  
• Digital SLRs are a great way to get into astrophotography if you already own one. The best are either Nikon or Canon. I use a Canon 300D which I have had modified to remove the daylight colour balancing filter as this blocks a lot of the red spectrum that we really want to record. Astronomiser.co.uk is the service I used to modify my Canon 300D and the service was first class. The camera was returned to me within 2 days. You can also purchase pre-modified cameras from Andy Ellis from about £500.
  
  
• However, if you are going to invest a significant amount of money in a camera for astronomy you may want to consider a dedicated astro-CCD camera, rather than a DSLR. There are many brands and prices available, too many to discuss here. The two benefits of a DSLR over an astronomy CCD in my opinion are: (i) DSLRs can be used for normal daylight photography not just astronomy, although you will have to do some colour balancing if you have the chip modified and (ii) the field of view of a DSLR is much larger than many dedicated astro-CCD cameras £ for £.
  
  
• If you are going to get into imaging stars, galaxies, etc (not planets and moon) then an image processing software is essential. Again there are many options. I use the excellent package called ImagesPlus developed by Mike Unsold (www.mlunsold.com) and selling for $230 at the moment. Tutorials and support are excellent. But as I say there are many options out there.
  
  
• If you don't want to invest yet in image processing software then try out this freeware:
  http://deepskystacker.free.fr/english/index.html or have a go an manually aligning images in Photoshop (warning this will take a LOT of time). Deepsky Stacker is fantastic for a free package and there are some good explanations of the theory behind image stacking on the website (click on the "How To Create Better Images" link on the left hand pane of their website).
  
  
• I also use a piece of software called NeatImage which helps to reduce noise in processed images. Be careful not to overprocess the image though.
  
  

Hopefully this will set some of you off the journey to taking your own images. If you need any specific advice get in touch via email: j.g.hunt@btinternet.com