Few updates on the upcoming TinyMos Tiny1 camera for astrophotography: → Sample videos/photos captured by TinyMos Tiny1 camera. → TinyMos Tiny1 camera demo available on GooglePlay. → The TinyMos Tiny1 camera project will be available for funding on Indiegogo on June 6th, 2016. → TinyMos also officially announced the camera specifications: Sensor 2.5K Ultra HD resolution [].
It's been a good three years now since I swapped my HP laptop for a Macbook Pro. In the mean time, I've started doing a bit more astrophotography and of course the change of operating system has affected the tools I use to obtain and process photos. Amateur astronomers have traditionally mostly used Windows, so there are a lot of Windows tools, both freeware and payware, to help. I used to run the freeware ones in Wine on Ubuntu with varying levels of success. When I first got the Mac, I had a lot of trouble getting Wine to run reliably and eventually ended up doing my alignment and processing manually in The Gimp. However, that's time consuming and rather fiddly and limited to stacking static exposures. However, I've recently started finding quite a bit of Mac OS based astrophotography software.
I don't know if that means it's all fairly new or whether my Google skills failed me over the past years:-) Software I thought I'd document what I use, in the hope that I can save others who want to use their Macs some searching. Some are Windows software, but run OK on Mac OS X. You can turn them into normal double click applications using a utility called.
If you calibrate polar alignment really perfect under windless night, it's capable of 300s of tracking at 200mm but normally I just expose 180s maximum for single frame. Polar alignment is kind of pain, I am not sure which version are you having.
I am having a astro version with L shape plate, polar light cannot fit into L-plate so I have to use my cellphone light to calibrate polar alignment. Thank you for the Information. I was in my backyard yesterday to do a test. I will show the results - if it is worth it. What I definitvely can say is that in comparison with the O-GPS it is so much more inconvenient work doing the polar alignement. I also use the L-plane and it really sucks that there is no light to support my weak eyes.
But once the setup is made and the machine is running in contiuous frame shooting mode it is a massive and comfortable benefit not having to stand aside and manually start each frame. O-GPS1 moves the sensor, not the camera, so it keeps you on the go frequently having to readjust the frame to keep the rotating stars within the picture. In contrast once the Star Adventurer setup is propperly running with Long exposure triggered by triggertrap I can leave the scene, drink a glass or do else for a long time.
So I did about 30 x 120 seconds yesterday without standing nearby. I will work on the results this evening. There it is: First Light on M51 for Pentax K5 and Starwatcher Star Adventurer! 20 x 118 seconds, 200mm/F4,5, ISO 800. 3 darks, 10 flats. Stacking with DeepSkystacker with 3 x drizzle, then a bit of Lightroom 6. I am convinced, have to practice for better polar alignment!and need a better method to get a sharp focus - vibrating 10x live screen magnification zoom is not enough for stars at 200 mm with later crop.
I will try to grave a Bahtinov mask this weekend. Very nice result, thank you for sharing. Translation - series of 20 pictures with exposure of 118 seconds each (called 'lights'). 'darks and flats' are correction frames that help to opitimise the results of the stacking process. 3 'darks' = 3 pictures with same parameters as the normal exposures (iso, aperture, exposure time etc.) at same temperature but with lens-cap on lens. Darks contain the sensor noise. They are later used to subtract noise from the 'lights' when the pictures are stacked.
If you use the built-in noise reduction for long exposure you do not need darks but each picture needs double time then. Better use darks that are conveniently shot at the end of the session while cleaning up the location. 10 'flats' = 10 pictures with same camera/lens combination that contain vignetting, stains, dust etc.
Of the optical system. I make my flats in cloudy daylight with white t-shirt over lens against the grey sky, focus set to infinity. Like the darks the flats are used during the stacking process. Aim is to neutralise vignetting and other imperfections that come from the lens and sensor. A 4th type of correction frames, the bias frames records the noise that the sensor produces while reading outvthe data. I do not use bias frames bedaus in my opinion the bias must also be a part ofvthe noise in the darks. By stacking lights, darks and flats the erratic noise ist reduced while the static signal (e.g.
Stars) is opitmised. Try it, its quite easy, software is for free (e.g. DeepSkySacker) and results are dramatically improved, also in wide field astrophotography. There are same good tutorials on youtube. Post added 04-25-15 at 11:10. The scope was built by Celestron in 1979-1980 for film astrophotography for a guy who worked for Eastman Kodak.
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His co-worker, a retiree from Eastman Kodak, who used to sell me Pentax camera stuff at the Torrance swapmeet got the telescope for me years ago from his astrophotographer friend who was likewise retired from Eastman Kodak. Celestron has twice offered to buy that telescope back from me when I have taken it in for cleaning. It is a marvelous instrument unlike any which are commercially built and sold today. I've actually seen the central star in M57 (The Ring Nebula in Lyra) on several occasions with that telescope and a Pentax 5 mm XW eyepiece. I didn't even know that it was difficult to see that particular star until I read in astronomy magazines about just how difficult it actually is to see that star. I've tried film astrophotography several times with it without much success - usually black film when trying eyepiece projection photography with the camera mounted on an eyepiece. I'm going to try it with my Pentax digital camera the next time I get out to the desert to play with it.
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It's the main reasons why I've been asking for some 'pointers' here on this astrophotography thread. I'm not much of a photographer and the learning curve is still pretty steep for me but I'll get there.