Phil's Astronomy Amateur Page

It really was a lovely night last night, so I pulled the laptop out, hooked up the webcam and having first zeroed-in on Jupiter with a normal eyepiece, replaced it with the cam.

Anyone who's ever tried imaging with a webcam will know what a pig it can be to actually find the target on the screen. The trick is to set the camera source to 30 frames per second (far too slow for such a bright object but necessary to find it in the first place) with high brightness then move the 'scope ever so slightly, in a spiral. Hopefully you should then be able to pick up the bright blur that is the target (you can bet it won't be in focus!).

Another problem you may encounter when imaging with a webcam (or ordinary camera, even) is that the focuser may not have enough adjustment outwards, so a special spacer may be necessary.
Guess what? Once I'd found Jupiter, I couldn't get the focuser in far enough to get a sharp image.

I overcame that in a slightly unorthodox way, by removing the clamping ring from the top of the drawtube. That gave me the extra 5 mm or so that I needed and Voila!

Go back into Source, change the frame rate to 100fps, lower the brightness to halfway and I could now see distinct stripes on the planet.

The next step would normally be to set the camera recording for 10 seconds or so, to create a series of stills, the best of which would be 'stacked' using Registax, to compile a half-decent final .jpg image. As I say, that would normally be the next step but my laptop went dead. Flat battery. But I had the mains adaptor plugged in, right? (Light's on, it should be charging...)

So just as I was about to capture some images, my equipment let me down, not for the first time either. Pack it all up, off to bed.

Getting in the house again, I put the laptop on charge once more.
"POP!"
Then nothing. Oh, please give me a break - that's something else to fix now.

But not now - tomorrow, maybe....