RASC Hamilton telescope camera at observatory?

[Gary Bennett]

Hi Andy,

 

I will discuss this at our next board meeting in July.

 

I have met quite a few people who do public outreach and use a Mallincam Video camera for the very reasons you presented. A Mallincam is a specially modified video surveillance camera that is designed to pick-up those faint fuzzies by “stacking” video frames into a single stationary image. Each incoming video frame makes the displayed image better and better as more frames are “stacked”. I was very impressed! I have also seen it done with conventional webcams, but as Shawn explained, the image is less than satisfactory.

 

This would definitely need to be an acquisition with a dedicated fundraising effort (approx $ 2,000). In addition to the Mallincam, there would also need to be a display screen and a power source to run it all.

- Camera:   $ 1,200 +

- LCD Monitor $ 350

- Power Supply (Deep Cycle Marine battery),  Inverter, and good battery charger:  $ 350

 

  Gary Bennett

 

From: astronomers-bounces at hamiltonrasc.ca [mailto:astronomers-bounces at hamiltonrasc.ca] On Behalf Of Shawn Preston
Sent: June-20-12 2:00 PM
To: astronomers at hamiltonrasc.ca
Subject: Re: RASC Hamilton telescope camera at observatory?

 

As someone who uses a video camera for part of his astrophotography endeavors, I'll chime in here. 

 

To view the brighter objects like the sun, moon, mars, Jupiter and saturn, you can make due with a reasonably modest video camera. In fact, many just used modified webcams. The challenge though is that due to atmospheric turbulence, they image at the eyepiece is often better than that at the monitor of the camera. To really see the plants well you need to capture video and process the frames in between the atmospheric turbulence... It can't really be done real-time. At being said, it's probably better to see a blurry planet than no planet at all!

 

For deeper sky objects like nebulae and galaxies you need a much more advanced video camera that generally runs about $1500.  A few other odds and ends are needed to make it work well, but you can get good results in near real-time. 

 

Shawn 


Shawn Preston

www.skyminer.ca

 


On Jun 20, 2012, at 1:26 PM, "Andrew Bienhaus" <andrew at bienhaus.org> wrote:

Hey guys,

Newbie here, on behalf of 1st Binbrook Scout Group. (a new member) ;-)

 

Our experience at the Conservation area, was a great one, and we look forward to a visit to the observatory.

 

But, one thing is evident, and that is that trying to get 30 kids past one eyepiece, is problematic. ;-)

 

I know there are cameras you can mount to eyepieces, and we do have an older data projector as well as monitors out the wazoo.

But what sort of expense and options are we talking about, to mount a digital feed onto the telescope?

 

and, is this something the club has ever considered raising funds to purchase for installation there?

 

thanks!

Andy

1st Binbrook

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