CCD vs Film? Lots of time vs no patience? Alright, this is your place to discuss all the astrophotography what's and what's not. You can discuss about techniques, accessories, cameras, whatever....just make sure you also post some nice photos here too!
I need to take a variety of moon shots for a study project.
I have been using Registax before but here is my challenge: the moon is larger than the entire FOV of a Toucam on a 900mm f/11 refractor.. also I did not use the motor drive on my EQ-1 (too much trouble, no clutch on the motor) so the image floats across the FOV.
What I would like to do is stack + mosaic, so that I can use all the frames from my AVI. I don't think Registax can do this. Any suggestions?
(and "buy a Sphinx" or "buy a GP-D" is not an option at this time)
After spending the past couple hours Registax'ing and mosaic'ing moon images by hand, I figured out that the Toucam has a 5.6um pixel pitch, while my Pentax K20D has a 4.9um pixel pitch.
So for lunar images it seems I can just take single shots with the DSLR, get the whole moon in the frame, and not have to suffer through stacking and mosaic-ing.
Of course I can barlow the Toucam but probably cannot with the DSLR... (or will a teleconverter work... hmmmm.....)
Hi,
It's not the pixel pitch... it's the sensor size. Pentax K20D had a bigger sensor compare to the toucam, so it can cover a larger field of view with the same focal length.
Happy shooting and have a nice day.
Yang Weixing "The universe is composed mainly of hydrogen and ignorance."
I think newbies should know this technical reason why some people go for webcam shots and why some people go for DSLR shots.
(Good) Webcams can take shots at 30 fps or faster to capture a series of shots that consists of sharp and atmospheric-blurred pics. We then stack the sharp ones. This is for resolution.
DSLR shots are nice and they contain the most of the moon and stuff, but you can't record shoots this fast. You lose on resolution.
I know it's the sensor size. thing is, the pixel pitch is important to me because pixel pitch determines minimum angular resolution (per pixel) -- the bigger the pixels, the lower the minimum angular resolution at a given FL.
if the FL is long and aperture is big, the Toucam will beat the DSLR hands down because it can "beat the seeing." but I'm using a short (f/6.2) small (70mm) scope, for which the Dawes limit is 1.5 arc-sec. Since the pixel pitch of both the Toucam and DSLR gives ~ 2.5 arc-sec resolution at my FL, then the Toucam doesn't massively beat the DSLR for resolution.
Off Topic :
Oooh..Pentax K20D! Pentax is very famous here too...those delicious eyepieces that rlow and elton have!
Anyway, do join in the Pentax sub-forum at www.clubsnap.org , the biggest photographic online community in Singapore.
Have you tried the K20D on Orion yet? personally I think the K-x is more suited for this application because its images noise level are so good even Nikon and Canon are noticing.
The Boldly Go Where No Meade Has Gone Before Captain, RSS Enterprise NCC1701R United Federation of the Planets
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"The universe is composed mainly of hydrogen and ignorance." 
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