Mallincam astro video camera shots via Celestron 11" w/ Hyperstar

[MrGrossebobette]

Best quality I have seen with this kind of camera.....beautiful !!!

Music is awesome....Thank you for sharing this !

[8Zeitgeist]

i expected more..

[talshiarr]

@8Zeitgeist It's called "Hubble Syndrome".

[8Zeitgeist]

@talshiarr well just from other reviews ive seen..

in their videos they show real time shots over a CRTmonitor that has double the contrast and brightness of those photos..

maybe it was the scope they were using was better then yours is all..

i dunno..

[8Zeitgeist]

@talshiarr oh my bad, ididnt read the description, 19th mag.. thats pretty faint

i thought nexstar was bad for astrophotography

hehe damn, i might have sprung for one of them if i new they were that good

[talshiarr]

@8Zeitgeist Well, it's only going to do so much with the fork mount, next scope I get will be EQ mount. There's no point trying any serious photography with my current one. The Mallincam is great because you never really need more than 50-60 sec exposures before skyglow wipes out any additional detail (unless you're at an exceptionally dark site).

[talshiarr]

@mpgxsvcd and @ourobouros2k2 - The camera itself just outputs a standard definition TV signal that I feed into an Imaging Source DFG/USB2-lt convertor. Its software displays the live image on the PC screen and can capture single frame tiff images at preset time intervals or upon a keypress, or save avi movies. I do post processing with MaximDL because I already owned it prior, but DSS works just as well, and Photoshop for the final curve adjustments.

[ourobouros2k2]

Awesome video. May I ask what your processing routine is? I have a Mallincam hyper color and a celestron nextstar 8se. Would like to start stacking some images, but DSS only works with certain files. Please elaborate on software/processing steps. I would be very grateful.

thanks, Andy

[mpgxsvcd]

Does it stack images while displaying them or do you have to do that in post?

[talshiarr]

See above...the limits they put on the amount of characters for messages is annoying.

[davesworld85100]

is you telescope on a eq wedge and is it better to have a eq wedge for astrophotography

[talshiarr]

@davesworld85100 Mine is not, and for normal viewing on a screen you don't need to have a wedge to use the Mallincam at all, it just needs to be able to track well. The longest single shot here is about 15 seconds. When stacking images taken near the zenith field rotation becomes visible when they're combined, but it's barely noticeable in any individual frame. If you're going to get a dedicated CCD that needs longer exposures of minutes or even hours, then yes an EQ wedge is almost mandatory.

[talshiarr]

Some of the Abell galaxy clusters and a few other things look like they got obliterated during the conversion from a bunch of images to the video and Youtube upload. They really are visible as faint glows. Some are quite striking when there are dozens of them.