All these pictures were taken at prime focus with a 10 inch Meade LX200 GPS telescope and a cooled Logitech Quickcam Pro 4000.
This is what I call a 'quick and dirty' webcam experiments webpage.
These are my first images of Jupiter using my cheap wedge. I only did a rough polar alignment before taking these images.
I fixed the vibration problems, but unfortunately broke off the cooling fan's electrical cable, so I only took uncooled images of Jupiter tonight. Jupiter rotates about 0.1 arcsecond per 23 seconds Jupiter rotates about 0.3 arcsecond per 69 seconds Jupiter rotates about 0.4 arcsecond per 92 seconds Jupiter rotates about 0.5 arcsecond per 115 seconds My 10 inch telescope has a theoretical resolution limit of 0.45 arc seconds. At prime focus one pixel covers 0.46 arcseconds of the CCD imaging chip. So in perfect conditions I should be able to capture frames of Jupiter for 115 seconds before Jupiter's axial rotation becomes a visible smear.
The wedge fixed the field rotation problem. So if images still smear I therefore think that focus goes out when smearing starts. In my case this is around 60 seconds.
So I no longer take 180 seconds exposures of Jupiter - it has proven in practice and theory to be too long. I only let the cooling run at 9 Volt - no Peltier - because of vibration issues
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| 60 seconds exposure - 15 frames stacked | 60 seconds exposure - 30 frames stacked | |
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| 90 seconds exposure - 15 frames stacked | 90 seconds exposure - 30 frames stacked | 90 seconds exposure - 45 frames stacked |
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| 180 seconds exposure - 15 frames stacked | 180 seconds exposure - 30 frames stacked | 180 seconds exposure - 45 frames stacked |
These settings are valid only for my circumstances: 10 inch SCT, prime focus Jupiter webcam astrophotography using a Logitech Quickcam Pro 4000.