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Terry,

Thanks for the nice compliments! :-)

When I was using the StellaCam I was also using the Meade fork mounted OTA
without an equatorial wedge. That limited how long I could capture images
without suffering such severe rotation that I would have to crop the image
severely to be reasonable. I alos only had the Atik manual filter wheel which
affected pointing when I pushed on it to rotate to a new filter. I quickly gave
up on the idea, but not if I had not had the handicaps I just mentioned.



How are you capturing and stacking your images, Terri? I did not use a filter,
but maybe the correct filter would help. The images I captured with my ST-10XME
and BRC required an H-alph filter to keep the CCD from being saturated even at
short exposures. For the StellaCam images, I captured them to a digital video
recorder, Canon A1 digital - long battery life an more compact than a laptop
- (could just have easily been to disk) and then converted them to AVI format
and stacked them directly from the AVI in Registax.



Afterward I could adjust the image somewhat. I also cut my teeth on Photoshop
and did a bit of contrast enhancement there. Once you have good digital data you
can usually make the necessary improvements provided that you have sufficient
data depth ( at least 16 bit) in my experience.



I think that the Watec is very similar to the StellaCam if my memory serves me.
Good luck on your endeavor! ;-)



Chris A

Dark Horse Observatory
www.darkhorseobservatory.org

----- Original Message -----
From: "Terrence Redding" <tredding@...>
To: ccd-newastro@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Saturday, July 11, 2009 1:30:15 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: Re: [ccd-newastro] Digest Number 4875








Chris, that is very nice work with the StellaCam.

I have the WAT-120N3+ which I believe is very similar to the
StellaCam. I don't have the cooler with mine, but have considered
adding it. It is amazing how very nice your images of the moon are.
Mine seem to be washed out. Possibly I should try it with a filter?

Have you tried using your StellaCam with a filter set to produce color
images of the planets?

Terry - W6LMJ

Terrence R. Redding, Ph.D. RTN
http://olt.net/learningstyle/Site_2/Learning_Style_Research.html