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Adapting a Webcam for Astrophotography

Posted by timothy on from the astounding-imagery dept.

Alien54 writes "Here's a guy who has done well taking digital photographs of the planets using not only a regular digital camera, but also using an old greyscale Quickcam. Lots of pics, of course, and some very nice shots of Mars and all the rest. He also has some higher end gear. See also these other related pages (link 1, link 2, link 3) Also worth looking at is the website of the QuickCam and Unconventional Imaging Astronomy Group"

8 of 74 comments (clear)

  1. Even better. by CySurflex · · Score: 5, Funny
    but also using an old greyscale Quickcam.

    You think that's something? I have obtained pictures of the surface of Mars by connecting a light sensitive detector to my Apple IIe that maps it's output to an ASCII-art graphic on the green monitor. It's been doing that since 1988. Of course it may just be a bad display chip.

  2. Anticipating the Slashdot Effect .... by bizitch · · Score: 5, Informative

    Heres the Google Cache

    http://216.239.57.100/search?q=cache:vccbQq0yX58 C: www.astrosurf.com/cidadao/+&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

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  3. I did remarkably the same thing a few years ago... by EpsilonFour · · Score: 4, Interesting

    My dad and I made an adapter that would go onto our telescope out of PVC pipe and some epoxy. We would connect our QuickCam (Color) and take pictures of the moon mostly, as the planets were small on it (Saturn's rings were just distinguishable) I have lost the pictures to many a reformat and new hard disk though. Very fun while we did it!

  4. Nice digicam pictures by mmoncur · · Score: 4, Informative

    This moon picture is one of the most impressive digicam pictures I've seen.

    Shame about the expensive telescope requirement, though.

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  5. Astrophotographers are persistent by Hanno · · Score: 5, Interesting

    More than five years ago I set up a page about how to disassemble a Greyscale quickcam and how to remove the infrared filter from it. The web page of this /. story even links to the old URL. I left the company four years ago and the page was removed from their web server shortly afterwards.

    Astrophotographers loved it, though, and a French astro club even recreated the page from a browser cache (!) and put up a backup: How to disassemble a quickcam, even Connectix tech support mentioned it to their users from time to time.

    I am still receiving questions about the procedure described on that page, more than five years later...

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  6. Webcam astronomy has already been on Slashdot by eap · · Score: 5, Informative

    Timothy posted a story about this earlier this year. You can read it here.

  7. Webcam astrophotography by BWJones · · Score: 4, Informative

    We actually have a number of articles on our website regarding webcam astrophotography here. There are four articles in all discussing first steps, photomontages, imaging of the planets and more.

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  8. Re:why the multi exposure? by Quixote · · Score: 4, Informative
    I'll take a total stab in the dark: could it be because a color CCD is not actually imaging all the colors at all the pixels? A color CCD uses a Bayer pattern (a 2x2 pattern of RG,GB) and then combines the results. This is why you get moire effect in some images. If you want to do astrophotography, this Bayer pattern stuff could cause problems.

    Of course, this is all theorizing here. I have no experience with astrophotography, and I just learnt about the Bayer pattern recently.