All these pictures were taken at prime focus with a 10 inch Meade LX200 GPS telescope and a Logitech Quickcam Pro 4000.

This is what I call a 'quick and dirty' webcam experiments webpage.

So you will not find my prettiest pictures here, but experiments I did.

Here are the reasons for posting these quick and ugly pictures on my website as well.

2 Images stacked	3 Images stacked	7 Images stacked	15 Images stacked
33 Images stacked	66 Images stacked	100 Images stacked	135 Images stacked
200 Images stacked - 30 %	270 Images stacked - 40 %	335 Images stacked - 50 %	400 Images stacked - 60 %

Prime focus; total exposure time 150 seconds. Taken at 18h06 - sunset just 30 minutes earlier - twilight still to end at 18h20 - astro. twilight only ends at 18h48.

Even 15 frames - 2.5 percent of the images - gives satisfactorily results.

So until I prove otherwise, I will stack 5 percent (33 images), 10 percent (66) and 30 percent (200) in future. The 30 percent image above looks slightly better than the 50 percent one.

The 50 percent image has 'too many' lower quality images stacked into it.

Quite interesting stuff, this ... initially counterintuitive, but obviously correct after being proven as such.

150 Seconds - 33 frames - 5 %	150 Seconds - 66 frames - 10 %	150 Seconds - 200 frames - 30 %
120 Seconds - 26 frames - 5 %	120 Seconds - 54 frames - 10 %	120 Seconds - 160 frames - 30 %
90 Seconds - 20 frames - 5 %	90 Seconds - 40 frames - 10 %	90 Seconds - 120 frames - 30 %
60 Seconds - 14 frames - 5 %	60 Seconds - 27 frames - 10 %	60 Seconds - 81 frames - 30 %

Very interesting: Jupiter's image quality deteriorates when more frames are stacked - going from left to right.

Jupiter's image quality also deteriorates for longer exposure times - going 'up' in the table above.

I should be able to capture for 120 seconds at prime focus with not axial rotation smearing at all, but it is clear I can only expose for 60 seconds.

Lesson learnt: for ALT/AZ mounts, you can only expose for 60 seconds, the field rotates too much for longer exposures.

Second lesson learnt: less is more, ..., stacking less but QUALITY frames are better than stacking MANY frames of lower quality.

45 seconds - 88 frames stacked	60 seconds - 150 frames stacked	90 seconds - 176 frames stacked

All images above taken with 2x Meade barlow lens. Taken 19h30, 25sec, 20gain, 100gamma, 100saturation. 40 percent of frames stacked for all webcam pictures of Jupiter.

My interpretation of this disappointing results:

45 seconds - noisy image because there is not enough frames to reduce/average out the noise.

60 seconds - best picture of Jupiter in this bunch. Not enough frames to produce a detailed picture.

90 seconds - much smoother - less noisy look. However, field rotation smears the result, so this picture of Jupiter has less detail than the 60 seconds picture.

Lesson: a need a wedge to capture more frames if I want to take beautiful pictures of Jupiter.

Since this is my quick and dirty results, I did not bother to fix the ugly red/blue dispersion (top right of Jupiter red, bottom left has blue fringe).

I captured more webcam images of Jupiter last night, but it took me all day to process the results just for this webpage.

I a now preparing for tonight's imaging session. I am also 'designing' the worlds' cheapest and quickest-to-build wedge.

I will use the next rainy day to process the outstanding images.