RkBlog

Making a Saturn/Jupiter monitoring setup

Last year brought us two captured Jupiter impacts (hit 1 hit 2). To catch such events you have to record in the right time and look at the image carefully. Doing standard planetary imaging that usually isn't going to happen. Even if I take AVIs for 6 hours the time covered on the AVIs will be much shorted. So there was a talk about amateur monitoring scopes... but nothing happened.

I'm thinking about creating such monitoring setup on my balcony. The minimal setup:
  • EQ3-2 SynScan or CG5 GT (guidable mount)
  • 5-6" scope
  • Guide camera/webcam and finderscope adapter (to guide on the planet)
  • Imaging webcam – 10 FPS should be ok. Best if it could stack/integrate few frames providing such speed.
  • Laptop to guide and save images
  • Software for analyzing all those few thousands of frames (Emil was working on something?)

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Venus night side 2010

Venus night side emission is well described and not so hard to catch with a CCD and a NIR filter. Winter apparition 2010/2011 was very favorable for this type of imaging as in winter Venus was at low phase on a dark sky. Amateurs and probably even more pros awaited November to catch the faint night side... As in astrophotography clouds broke a lot of imaging plans, as Europe was mostly cloudy through the winter.

I've managed to get one good image of the night side at 26 November 2010 with Basler Ace acA640-100gm, RG1000 filter and SCT 8" at f/10, 1 sec exposures. Using some post-processing of my friend I've got this:
venus-26-11-2010
Also Roman Vaňúr managed to catch Venus night using QHY5 and RG950 filter. Just noting that others use much more advanced setups including expensive and powerful cameras like QSI 504 or SBIG ST7-XME cameras.

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Tucsen microscope cameras in astrophotography

Tucsen is a Chinese company making microscope CCD and CMOS cameras (site 1, site 2). In Great Britain some of them are sold by Opticstar as astronomy cameras. They also provide Nebulosity and Maxim support for those cameras.

Tucsen CCD cameras have 12-bit dynamic range (used Sony CCDs can't really use 16-bit A/D), active cooling and they can do long exposures. The 12-bit A/D makes them also faster than 16-bit Atik or QHY camera with the same CCD.

Most interesting is TCC-6.1 (Opticstar DS-615C XL) equipped with big APS-C size color CCD - ICX413AQ. The same sensor is used in QHY8. If you want a color upgrade to a DSLR this model may be the answer. Tucsen also has few more color cameras with big sensors. They have much smaller pixels and can be used with lenses or short focal lengths (small refractors). There is also few mono models, one is equipped with ICX285 (Atik 314L+, QHY2Pro). This camera may be an alternative to those Atik/QHY models as well as quite handy lunary cameras (as it's faster).

If you want to find the best price for Tucsen cameras try finding their local reseller or partner. You can also send an email to their support, and they will redirect you to the closest reseller... Check what software they provide, and which revision of given model they have - standard software has all the features but it's not astronomical software so you won't get FITS files for example. There seems to be few revisions of Tucsen cameras (from black housing to blue). They differ in cooling power or sometimes maximum exposure time. Some cameras may be supported in Nebulosity by choosing matching Opticstar camera name (not checked).

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