Category: DS10c

DS8300cTEC First Light w C6 Hyperstar at f/2

8/9/2024

Last night I tried out my new DS8300cTEC video astronomy camera on my Celestron 6” telescope with Starizona Hyperstar at f/2. I have seen some great images by others using the DS8300cTEC on a Celestron RASA8 telescope using post processing that show what this camera can do on the high end of the scale. I plan to use my DS8300cTEC on the other end of the scale on a portable setup for near real time viewing and outreach. For this, you need the ability to “show something quickly to talk about” and to be able to see several Deep Sky Objects in one viewing that is much more impressive than looking through an eyepiece on a telescope.

The C6 with Hyperstar is a promising portable combination that I have used with my DS10cTEC. I used my AVX mount on my pier in my SkyShed for my DS8300c first light testing on the same C6 with Hyperstar. For portability, I would use this on my Evolution mount.

In the above picture the Hyperstar is hidden by the Dew Shield. The following picture shows the C6 before and after the Hyperstar is installed replacing the secondary mirror. The DS8300c (or DS10c) easily screws onto the Hyperstar. This also shows the C6 on my portable Evolution mount.

The DS10c had a very large field of view due to its fairly large sensor size, especially when used with Hyperstar. This requires notable zooming (or using ROI) for many typical outreach targets. I found the DS8300cTEC seems to work well visually to see objects reasonably well without zooming, and works well when zoomed in due to its small pixel size. The DS10c has 4.63 micron pixels and the DS8300 has 2.9 micron pixels. The DS10c is a 10.7MP camera while the DS8300c is an 8.3MP camera, which seems to make the stacking a little quicker with the DS8300c since less data is being transferred and the FOV is smaller on the DS8300c.

Below are some images from last night that confirmed for me that the DS8300cTEC should accomplish my objective. The small crescent moon was up at twilight when I captured my first image, which gives a good idea of the FOV with this setup. I was only able to do a quick focus just before the moon set below my rooftop. Before moving onto other targets, I performed a better focus using Vega and a focus mask. The following images include the exposure time in seconds, gain, histogram settings and number of stacked images. All images use bin 1 and a CLS filter.

Moon 1.6ms 1g 0-255h no-stacking CLS filter 8.25pm-twilight

M13 Hercules Cluster 1.1s 75g 0-255h 20stk CLS filter

DS10c: M13 Hercules Cluster 1.1s 160 16-255h 15stk CLS filter. This is a prior night's image using DS10c with same setup for comparison purposes. The field of view is much larger than the DS8300.

M29 Cooling Tower 1s 130g 0-255h 10stk CLS filter

ngc6633 Captain Hook Cluster 1.3s 65g 10-255h 10stk CLS filter

As an example to “show something quickly to talk about”, the Dumbbell immediately appeared on the screen when the slew stopped. This image was captured in less than a minute using 1.1 second exposures, 75 gain and 20 stacked images. It is followed by a zoomed image that shows more detail.

M27 Dumbbell 3s 105g 75-255h 10stk CLS filter (<1min) – FULL field of view

M27 Dumbbell 3s 105g 75-255h 10stk CLS filter (<1min total time) - Zoom/cropped image to see more detail.

Keep in mind that this is from my Bortle 6 southern skies in my hot and humid backyard in the summer. To combat the skyglow, I used an Astronomik CLS-2 Filter. I will probably need to wait for winter skies here to be able see fainter nebula (or use a different filter).

Based on this "first light" night, I expect my DS8300c will become the camera for my portable setup. Using the DS8300 felt like it was easier to get a nice view of a target.

Second Night

Amazingly I had a 2nd clear night to try out my new DS8300cTEC! It was a “little” cooler (79 degrees) and less humid (68%), but still not ideal viewing conditions in my backyard Bortle 6 skies. I decided to try some other filters that might help with faint nebula. I have a filter drawer on the Hyperstar C6 so it is easy to swap filters out. I just have to refocus whenever I remove or swap filters. I found the Crescent Nebula fits nicely in the DS8300c Field of View. It was easy to remove the CLS filter I used the previous night and try the L-Extreme filter followed by the L-eNhance filter. This is the first time I have used these filters and I need to learn how to adjust the colors a little better, but I was definitely pleased with how well I could see the Crescent Nebula without needing to zoom in.

Due to using these filters and my subject target, I switched to using 15 second exposures and stacked 10 images for the captures. Below are images using each of these filters. Even though each image took longer than the previous night due to the filters used, I timed it and found it just took a total of 3.5 min to stack the 10 images. This is still within near live “talking time” for outreach purposes and was interesting to watch as more images were stacked. Note: these images were “post processed” for 1 minute using MS Photo viewer to show up better on the web.

c27 Cresent Nebula 15s 150g 20-200h 10stk L-Extreme filter (=~3.5 min) pp

10 - c27 Cresent Nebula 15s 150g 14-200h 10stk L-eNhance filter (~3.5 min) pp

DS8300 moved to a small refractor

I saw posts where others have used the DS8300c on a small refractor. So, another night I decided to try my DS8300c on my small MCR-80ED refractor. Since my C6 with Hyperstar was set up on my equatorial mount on my pier, I just used my small portable SkyProdigy Alt-Az mount I had handy.

The tracking on this mount limited me to stacking 10 second exposures, which is fine for my outreach use. I looked at three targets: M13 Hercules Cluster, M27 – Dumbbell and C27 – Crescent Nebula. No filter was used for M13 and M27. I used the L-eNhance filter with C27. Again, these are at a Bortle 6 sky in a neighborhood with 80 degree night temps and very high humidity (95%+).

I mainly wanted to see the Field of View and image results on the 80mm f/5 refractor compared to using my C6 with Hyperstar f/2. This refractor and DS8300c seems to work fairly well for an extremely portable setup, and some typical targets fit nicely in its FOV. As expected, the C6/Hyperstar FOV will be better for larger nebula and f/2 exposures, while still being portable.

Below are 3 images using the 80mm refractor plus one image from C6/Hyperstar capture of m27 for comparison.

m27 Dumbbell 2.6s 140g 70-200h 20stk FULL field of view using no filter with 80mm refractor

m27 Dumbbell 3s 105g 75-255h 10stk FULL field of view using C6 with Hyperstar (comparison image)

m13 Hercules 2s 73g 42-255h 60stk using no filter with 80mm refractor

C27 Cresent Nebula 10s 150g 30-70h 10stk using L-eNhance filter with 80mm refractor

I think both of these setups will work for my portable use. If I need a really lightweight setup, I will use the MCR-80ED refractor and small Alt-Az SkyProdigy mount. I can run it all for several hours with the TEC cooling active using my ROCKPALS 250-Watt Portable Lithium Battery Pack with 12v DC and 110V AC Outlet.

The C6 with Hyperstar packs a lot in a small package and paired with an Evolution mount is also very portable. Since the Evolution has a built in Lithium battery, my battery pack could easily run the DS8300cTEC with cooling active and supplement my laptop with a 2nd monitor for a long time.

One other item I have come to appreciate about the DS8300cTEC is it’s power cable. It is noticeably smaller and more flexible than the power cables for the DS10cTEC and DS26cTEC that I have. The cable to the left in the picture below shows the small flexible portion of the power cable that goes into the back of the DS8300cTEC.

You can piggyback this small cable onto the USB cable (e.g. using Velcro) to make it seem like you are just routing a single cable to the back of the DS8300cTEC. One thing I have noticed with the DS8300cTEC is that I am not able to use it with my portable laptop with just the USB cable connected. Once I also plug in the power cable, MallincamSky shows the camera is connected. By having the small power cable paired up with the USB cable ahead of time, I can quickly route and plug them both in when assembling my portable setup and be able to use the fan and/or cooling as needed.

Below is a link to my post showing how to install the Hyperstar on the Celestron 6" telescope. It also shows my initial images using the DS10c on the C6 Hyperstar.

Click Here for more C6 Hyperstar details.

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2024 Eclipse from Riesel, TX

4/20/2024

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When I woke up on Monday, April 8th, at our Eclipse RV site in Riesel, TX, I looked out the window to see if the prediction of clouds was true. It was! Clouds from horizon to horizon!! Then I remembered it was cloudy the morning of the 2017 Eclipse and it cleared for totality. So, I proceeded as planned and put my C130 Newtonian onto my SkyProdigy mount that was previously aligned. The C130 already had my Mallincam DS10c inserted with a 0.8x focal reducer and locked in focus from the prior CLEAR night test. I selected the sun and then slewed to it, or rather where it was behind the clouds. Here is what the skies were looking like mid-morning and me trying to stay optimistic next to my telescope that was dutifully tracking the fuzzy sun as the morning progressed.

It turns out it became less cloudy later in the morning with occasional breaks during partiality. Like 2017, it became reasonably clear during totality! I was capturing images every 2 minutes during partiality and switched to every 2 seconds just prior to totality. I did have to make periodic centering adjustments as you will notice in my images.

Below is an overview of a few of my best images during the eclipse...

Since I was using an Alt-Az mount, you will notice some field rotation. I used video mode with auto exposure to handle the changing cloud conditions. Here is a picture of my MallincamSky screen using the auto exposure box while cloudy … and you can even see a couple of sunspots (as well as the clouds)!

When totality began and I removed my solar filter, all I had to do was quickly move the box around on the screen until I saw a viable image appear. I then looked up and enjoyed seeing totality using just my eyes. Once again, I was amazed at what I saw. I believe there was some haze affecting how much of the corona was visible. But we could easily see with our naked eyes a noticeable red prominence extending down at the bottom of the sun! You can see it and some other prominences in the images. Below is an image where I have adjusted the color to approximate the view of the sun we saw with our eyes when we looked up (but without the cloudy background).

Since totality lasted 3 min 45 sec at Riesel, we also took time to view things around us during totality. We even felt a breeze at totality. Shortly after totality it began to get cloudy again.

I originally had another mount and telescope setup that I was unable to use due to focuser problems on the telescope, so I used my little SkyProdigy backup mount setup. As it turned out, it worked pretty well.

During partiality we used highly calibrated and expensive devices to also view the eclipse progress. Can you guess what devices produced these images of the eclipse of the sun?

We had some visitors to our RV site that we invited to see images on my screen of the eclipse as it progressed, in addition to their seeing it live through their paper solar glasses. Needless to say, they were astonished at what they saw live on my laptop screen. One person asked if he could take a picture of the image on the screen. I said sure. What we did not realize is their reflection on the laptop screen was also captured in their photo, turning it into a selfie with the eclipse. So, Sharon and I quickly posed for our own selfie with the eclipse. Here is our unique “selfie” on that day with the eclipse.

When Sharon and I were first married we lived in Austin, Texas for a couple of years. We enjoyed driving out into the hill country exploring what we could see. While we were in Reisel we took a day trip to drive through the hill country again. We were fortunate on this Eclipse trip to see a couple of our favorite things we remembered… fields of Indian Paintbrush flowers and Texas Bluebonnets.

Below are the full images of the 2024 Eclipse that were included in the overview.

Before eclipse began

Partial Eclipse of the Sun by the Moon

The Diamond Ring

Bailey's Beads

Corona

Totality

Partial Eclipse after totality

Eclipse of Sun by the Moon completed

When we headed home, we declared the trip to Riesel, Texas was a success!!

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First use of Hyperstar 6 on Celestron 6” with DS10c

2/17/2024

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I recently received my Starizona Hyperstar 6v4 for my Celestron 6. My idea is to use my C6 on an Evolution mount for portable outreach at f/2 using my DS10c. I first had to install the Starizona secondary mirror plate with knob onto my C6 secondary mirror to enable it to be easily removed when using the Hyperstar 6. If your Celestron 6” secondary mirror does not have a plate with a knob, click on the link at the end of this post for further instructions.

To set up the Hyperstar, position your telescope tilted slightly upward. Then carefully unscrew the secondary mirror retaining ring.

Unscrew the can from the end of the Hyperstar and place it nearby. Grasp the knob to pull the secondary out and then place it in the can you removed from the Hyperstar. Then screw the retaining ring onto the can so the secondary mirror can be safely stored while the Hyperstar is in use.

Now carefully insert the Hyperstar where the secondary mirror was removed and screw it in place. Do NOT overtighten - just screw it on until it is slightly snug.

Now screw the camera onto the end of the Hyperstar. Again, screw on until snug, but do not over tighten.

Now attach the USB cable, and if using TEC cooling, attach the power cable.

First Light with Hyperstar C6

I had my initial HyperStar C6 + DS10c viewing session using the Evolution mount on Monday 2/5/2024. It was a clear night in my backyard and about 45 degrees, but with humidity here in the South of 85%.

After setting up the C6 on the Evolution mount and adding the Hyperstar 6v4 and DS10c, I performed a StarSense AutoAlign and then slewed to a bright star. Using a Bahtinov focus mask, I focused as best I could, knowing I would have to collimate the Hyperstar since this was its first time use. Having used a Hyperstar on my C8 I was familiar with the process of using the Hyperstar adjusting screws. After a period of time I had a good enough collimation to begin.

Even though it was clear, I did have to contend with humidity and my Bortle 6 surrounding Skyglow. Due to the conditions, I first checked out star clusters to get a feel of the field of view and exposure time. The DS10c was set at bin 1 for this session. Since this was my first time with this setup, I just have a few examples. With the Hyperstar on the C6, note that star cluster exposure time is under 1 second at bin 1.

Here are my “first light” image captures using the Hyperstar C6 with a DS10c Video Astronomy camera.

m45 Pleiades
Settings: 0.5 second exposure, 160 gain, 50-255 histogram, 15 stacked images

m36 Pinwheel cluster
Settings: 0.75 second exposure, 130 gain, 45-255 histogram, 20 stacked images

m37 Salt-and-pepper cluster
Settings: 0.75 second exposure, 135 gain, 45-255 histogram, 10 stacked images

Second Night

I had my second night with the Hyperstar C6 + DS10c viewing session on Tuesday 2/6/2024. It was also a clear night in my backyard and about 50 degrees, with humidity of 55%. The SkyGlow and humidity gave me some grief again trying to view nebula. So, I decided to give the filter drawer a try and inserted a 2” SkyGlow filter hoping it would help, which it did. The first thing I realized though was the added glass of the filter in the optical train changed my focus. So, I slewed to a bright star, used the Bahtinov focus mask and brought it back into focus. Using a filter also increased the exposure time some, but at f/2 it was still fast and definitely helped with my Bortle 6 skyglow.

I was pleasantly surprised that the exposure time was still within the crowd-pleasing range for outreach. Looking at the list below, you can see that my exposure time was still under 2 seconds even with this filter in place with the DS10c at bin 1. I did begin to notice some vignetting with the Hyperstar on the C6, but to me it was OK for outreach where speed of seeing a nice image is needed. What really made this effective was the use of ROI which produced a significant difference in stacking speed since only the pixels of the region of interest were being transferred from the camera to the computer and stacked. Also the image cropping when using ROI reduced the visible vignetting.

The Andromeda Galaxy image using ROI 2200x1700 enabled MallincamSky to stack 50 1.6-second images in 1.5 minutes. Even though the Crab Nebula was small, you do begin to see some detail in its ROI image. The Orion Nebula was also small in the full field of view image, but note that it was produced by a 0.6 second exposure with no stacking! I included two 1600x1000 ROI images of the Orion Nebula, each stacking 30 1-second images at a lower gain. I used LHDR in the last one to enable the core stars to be visible. Notice that I started it with same the exposure as the other one and then dropped the exposure briefly at the end using LHDR to populate the center core.

The SkyGlow filter was in place for all the following images.

m31 Andromeda Galaxy
Settings: 0.75 sec then 1.2sec LHDR, 160 gain, 95-255 histogram, 20 stacked images

m31 Andromeda Galaxy
Settings: 1.6 sec, 160 gain, 130-255 histogram, 50 stacked images, ROI 2200x1700, total time 1.5 min

m1 Crab Nebula
Settings: 2 sec, 160 gain, 80-255 histogram, 55 stacked images, ROI 1200x800

m42 Orion Nebula
Settings: 0.6 second, 160 gain, 20-255 histogram No stacking

m42 Orion Nebula
Settings: 1 sec, 110 gain, 60-255 histogram, 30 stacked images ROI 1600x1000

m42 Orion Nebula
Settings: 1 sec then briefly 0.2s LHDR, 110 gain, 60-255 histogram, 30 stacked images, ROI 1600x1000

I am pleased how the C6 with Hyperstar and DS10c work well together, and I believe it will be a good portable combination.

Note: If your Celestron 6” secondary mirror does not have a plate with a knob, for further instructions click: installing-secondary-mirror-mounting-plate-wknob-on-celestron-6.html

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Arkansas Starry Night Viewing Site

10/13/2023

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A little over a week ago I was getting ready for a week-long camping trip under the Arkansas skies near Mammoth Springs. In the past this has been primarily a camping/fishing trip for some men (and some of their sons) from our church and any others who wish to attend what has come over the years to be known as the annual Knucklehead Family Reunion. Since I had not had much luck with fly fishing, I had not been in a few years. I found out there was a good open sky area on a hill in a field right across the road from some of the cabins at the location they have used for the last 3 years. And I learned it also has good dark skies there (Bortle class 3!). Hmmm, I said to myself. Maybe it is time for this to become a camping/fishing/video astronomy trip. As I discussed it with some of the guys, they encouraged me to come and bring along my astronomy gear. And that’s what I did.

I was limited on packing space in my Jeep Cherokee, so I took my basic portable video astronomy setup. I carried my small Celestron Alt-Az SkyProdigy mount with built-in StarSense AutoAlign Camera, my Mallincam 80mm refractor telescope and Mallincam DS10c camera. Here is a daytime picture of my setup with my laptop inside a bin turned on its side on the table.

Starry Night Viewing Site in process of being set up in field across from cabins. Battery power used for telescope, laptop and viewing monitor.

This refractor telescope and camera work great together without the need for a focal reducer and are well balanced when mounted on the small SkyProdigy mount.

MC DS10c on Mallincam 80MM Telescope using Celestron SkyProdigy Mount with built in StarSense AutoAlign

Here is a night picture with an external monitor connected to my laptop and set up on the table so everyone could easily see the “near real time” live image from the video astronomy camera “looking” at the sky through the telescope. The telescope was pointed at the Andromeda Galaxy when this picture was taken.

KFR 2023 Starry Night Viewing Site with telescope in background, viewing monitor on table, Laptop control inside bin also on table

I had 4 straight nights (Oct 7-8) of clear dark skies with various interested men and boys watching my monitor, discussing what we saw and asking questions. Some really good questions were asked like “can we see stars outside our galaxy?” (Basic answer - all stars that we see are in our own galaxy, unless you have a Hubble or Web telescope and a gravity lens handy). For the first time some saw the Dumbbell Nebula, the Hercules Cluster, the Ring Nebula, Andromeda galaxy, etc. appear on the screen shortly after slewing to it. Then after making a few adjustments and just a little stacking they were amazed at what they saw. We discussed distances to objects inside our own galaxy, and galaxies far, far away – millions of light years away. I decided afterwards the trip was a success.

I kept my exposures to a max of 5 seconds and used the histogram to keep the background dark and quickly bring out features using LHDR stacking. Due to the Alt-Az mount you can see some field rotation at the edges of an image when the target was high in the sky, but the centered object is the main attraction. As I went from one target to another, they quickly got the idea that this is more like looking at objects in the sky through a telescope rather than taking pictures. In fact, I sometimes forgot to do screen captures before jumping to show them something else. When I said “I think there is a galaxy here on the screen... I’ll zoom in and make some adjustments to see what we can see”, they really got the idea it's near real time viewing.

The following are some of the images that I did capture. Most of these images are zoomed in with the target centered to show the detail like I do on the monitor. For reference, the first image is the Dumbbell Nebula shown in the full field of view for the DS10c camera on the refractor telescope before I zoom in. It is followed by its “zoomed in” image of the Dumbbell Nebula. I have found that captured images sometimes don’t show up as well on the web, so I take a couple of minutes of post-processing per image later on using the Microsoft Photos adjustment sliders before posting them here.

The name of the target object is listed beneath the image along with its distance in light years from Earth (ly = light years, Kly = 1,000 ly, Mly = 1 million ly). For example, light from the Dumbbell nebula at a distance of 1.4 Kly takes 1400 years to travel to Earth. So, what we see now is the Dumbbell nebula as it looked 1,400 years ago!

M27 - Dumbbell/Apple Core Nebula - 1.4 Kly - Full Field of View using MC DS10c on Mallincam 80MM Telescope Stacked 5 sec exposures

M27 - Dumbbell/Apple Core Nebula - 1.4 Kly – “Zoomed” image from MC DS10c on Mallincam 80MM Telescope Stacked 5 sec exposures

M13 - Hercules Cluster - 2.3 Kly

NGC891 - Edge on Spiral Galaxy – 32 Mly ... what we see now is how it looked 32 million years ago!
Note: Targets that are millions of light years away are outside our own Galaxy.

M45 - Pleiades/Seven Sisters - 430 ly

M31 - Andromeda Galaxy - 2.5 Mly
M110 (upper right) - Elliptical Galaxy - 2.7 Mly

M103 - Open Cluster (micro-dipper) in Cassiopeia - 7.2 Kly

NGC7293 - Helix Nebula - 790 ly

As a backup telescope I brought the 5” f/5 Newtonian telescope shown below that came with the SkyProdigy. It provided a slightly larger field of view than the refractor, and I used it the last couple of nights.

MC DS10c on 5" Newtonian Telescope Celestron SkyProdigy Mount with built in StarSense AutoAlign

Here are some images using this camera/telescope combination.

NGC253 - Sculptor/Silver Dollar Galaxy - 12 Mly

M76 - Little Dumbbell/Cork Nebula - 5.8 Kly

NGC6946 - Fireworks Galaxy - 22 Mly

M82 - Cigar Galaxy - 12 Mly

M57 - Ring Nebula - 1.4 Kly

There were a little over 20 campers including the boys. Over those 4 nights many of them came up a hill in small groups to gather around the monitor and telescope. Below is a picture of the KFR Starry Night Viewing Site with a few gathered around in the viewing area in the glow from red led lights I had on the ground.

Campers gathered around monitor and telescope setup in open field

I bought a red led string the day before I left and also grabbed my Christmas tree extension cord containing a foot switch. I put the string of red leds around the telescope which effectively kept everyone outside the “red ring of fire”. I would tap the foot switch to turn the red leds on when I slewed to a new target so they could watch the telescope as it moved and stopped. It was fun for them to watch it slewing to its target, and it also allowed them to see which way the telescope was pointing when it stopped. I would then tap the foot switch to turn the red led string off so they could focus on watching the image beginning to show up on the second monitor I had set up on the table. I was able to show how I could control the mount and slew to targets using the telescope hand controller, the laptop connected to the hand controller, or my phone (with SkyFi).

Laptop inside bin on table to protect from dew. "Ring of Fire" red led string around telescope area to protect against accidental bumps.

Below are a couple of photos of my favorite daytime viewing site next to the Spring River in a recliner with my Kindle and lunch at hand.

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DS26cTEC First Impressions

12/15/2020

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I recently purchased a Mallincam DS26cTEC Video Astronomy camera that has a large 28.3mm Class 1 CMOS sensor with 6224x4178 resolution. I have been very pleased with my existing DS10c, but had been thinking about getting a TEC camera for active cooling and greatly reduced hot pixels. When I heard about the DS26cTEC, I decided that was the TEC camera for me to move up to with an even bigger FOV, higher resolution and increased sensitivity.

Here are some of my first thoughts about the DS26cTEC…
1. The larger chip produces a very nice Field of View (chip diagonal 28.3 vs 21.63mm for DS10c)
2. Its smaller pixel size produces higher resolution detail (3.76 vs 4.63 microns for DS10c).
3. This is a lot of pixels (26.1 vs 10.7 megapixels for DS10c)!
4. The sensitivity is extremely good. When using 2x2 binning, it is awesome. I have also tried 3x3 and 4x4 binning with decent resolution. When using different binning settings, the FOV remains the same.
5. The TEC cooling produces very pleasing images without having to use darks (it uses the same cooling system as DS10cTEC version). Moving to a camera with TEC cooling does require a second cable to the camera for power, but I was able to easily figure out how to route the power cable at the telescope up to the camera.
6. No amp glow (same as DS10c).
7. I find using the Region of Interest (ROI) setting in MallincamSky is really effective with this camera for “zooming” in on your target and only stacking the pixels you are interested in. This also reduces the file size of saved images.

On the left is a picture my new black DS26cTEC next to my blue DS10c (which does not have TEC cooling), and on the right a picture of a black DS10cTEC (with cooling).

As you can see in the image on the right of a DS10cTEC, the addition of the TEC cooling feature increases the size of a camera, and it is worth it!

The MallinCam website describes the TEC feature this way. “MallinCam developed a unique cooling system that provides no direct physical contact between the Peltier cooler and the sensor. Instead, the Peltier cooler creates a convection system “refrigerator-like” environment that cools the sensor without actually contacting it. This cooling system is unique to MallinCam and not found on other astronomical imaging cameras.” … “ MallinCam has successfully designed a working alternative - a cooling chamber called refrigeration cooling - which subjects the CMOS sensor to cooling inside a triple sealed vacuumed sensor chamber controlled with a heating element mounted around the internal optical window to control and avoid dew formation on the optical window and surroundings. A vacuumed sealed chamber is used to eliminate the use of desiccant material and keep dew free environment permanently.” … “The result of this new technology [is it] will not require a dark frame for live application or imaging in most cases.”

My blue DS10c is a great camera. You can see my most recent images using the DS10c in my 10/24/2020 blog “Dark Skies in Oklahoma”. My DS10c produces nice images as long as I use darks to reduce the effects of hot pixels. I have to use darks most of the time with my DS10c - too many distracting hot pixels in the southern summers here if I didn't use darks (since my DS10c does not have TEC cooling). I found darks worked best when the darks were captured at similar settings as the image (Exposure, gain, histogram, etc.) This helped reduce the distracting pixels, but took up some of my time that I could have been viewing. That is one reason I wanted to get a TEC camera so I could quickly experiment with different settings to obtain the best image while viewing. With TEC cooling, there are very few hot pixels and average stacking does a pretty good job of reducing the distraction of any remaining hot pixels for near real-time viewing.

I know others with the DS10cTEC have success viewing without having to use darks due to TEC cooling. So far, I feel like I made the right choice for me to step up to the DS26cTEC to be able to “view” without having to capture and apply darks and getting a larger chip size/FOV and higher resolution.

I am still learning about using the TEC cooling. I use with the recommended default of 0 C (it now shows 32 F on my screen since I changed my preference setting to F). At the end of a session, I turn off the TEC cooling but let the fan run for a few minutes until the temp in the lower right of the screen reaches ambient temp and then I close MallincamSky and turn off power.

So far I have only had a few nights I could try the DS26cTEC out (mainly because of weather). Here are images from the DS26cTEC on three telescopes that will give you a feel for the Field of View with this chip size. I will happily note that I did not capture/apply any darks when capturing images shown in this post.

My first light with the DS10cTEC was of the moon using my MCR-80 F5 refractor.

Here is a nice image of Andromeda (M31) on a Newtonian 130mm (5”) F5 reflector.

This image of the Pleiades (M45) gives a good idea of the FOV using my 8” Schmidt-Cassegrain with Hyperstar at F2.

Using the Region of Interest (ROI) feature of MallincamSky is a great way to just view your target area of interest and only average stack the image portion you need. I noticed using ROI makes the stacking process more efficient and faster for the DS26cTEC compared to stacking the full FOV image resolution of 6224x4186. Also with ROI, saved images only include your target region resulting in smaller image files. Combining ROI with 2x2 binning can be a powerful combination with this camera. Due to the small native 3.76mm pixel size, using 2x2 binning still produces an image with good resolution.

The latter part of November we took our RV to a campground with a Bortle 4 rating. Rain was predicted for the first two nights and the third night was questionable. So I just took my easy setup SkyProdigy Mount (with StarSense) and the 130mm Newtonian F5 reflector that came with it. Back in 2014, the second blog post I made on my RemoteVideoAstronomy.com site on 11/17/2014 was titled “A good beginner telescope for RVA” and I used the Mallincam Micro on it. Fast forward to 2020 and I still use this telescope and mount for trips where I “might” have a viewing night. It paid off for the first part of the last night at this campground with a clear dark sky.

So here are some examples of putting an amazing DS26cTEC on the “little telescope that thought it could” at a Bortle 4 campground. These are all on a 5” Newtonian reflector at F5 using the DS26cTEC with 2x2 binning under clear dark skies.

In the following 3 examples the original field of view image is on the left and the image with ROI enabled is on the right.

M27 (Dumbbell) at 3 secs 100 gain 10-75 histogram 10 stacked 2x2 bin

M17 (Omega/Swan) at 2.2 secs 100 gain 45-200 histogram 22 stacked 2x2 bin.

NGC8912 (Spiral galaxy) at 5 secs 100 gain 12-100 histogram 10 stacked 2x2 bin.

Here are a couple of examples of just an ROI image using Live High Dynamic Range (LHDR) technique where some settings are changed during the stacking process:

M33 (Triangulum/Pinwheel) 5 secs 100 gain 20-135 histogram 10 stacked then 25-75 histogram 20 more stacked (LHDR) 2x2 bin

NGC253 (Sculptor/Silver Dollar) 4 secs 100 gain 64-200 histogram 10 stacked then 64-150 histogram 10 more stacked (LHDR) 2x2 bin

Back at home, I captured an image of the Orion Nebula using my Celestron 8” SCT with the Universe Focal Reducer and a 10mm spacer. There is a little vignetting with the 10mm spacer (another day I tried the Universe Focal Reducer without a 10mm spacer and it greatly reduced the vignetting effect).

In the following image I used the LHDR technique at 100 gain 0-255 histogram and varied the exposure from 1s,2s,3s,4s,5s and then changed the histogram to 0-50 for the remaining time. Interesting combination. There were 35 total images average stacked. I did a quick enhancement (<1min) of the final image using Microsoft Photo editor for it to show up better on the web.

m42 (Orion Nebula) 1s..5s 100g 0-255h..0-50h 35stk

I will have to say I am very pleased with my new DS26cTEC! I hope to soon try it out more on my 8” SCT with Hyperstar at F2.

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Dark Skies in Oklahoma

10/24/2020

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This October I got a chance to take my Mallincam DS10c Video Astronomy camera, Celestron 8” F10 telescope and Celestron Evolution Alt/Az Mount to Texoma Shores Resort campground in Oklahoma with nice dark Bortle 4 skies. There were light clouds when we first arrived but good weather most nights and temperatures of around 50-60 degrees. This time of year, we were able to get a site with no one beside us at the edge of a field with good overhead viewing.

I was able to leave my telescope set up and covered during the day right next to our RV and car. As evening approached, I could easily uncover the telescope, perform an Auto Align with my Star Sense accessory and start viewing fairly quickly. I began with a Mallincam Universe Focal Reducer and a 10mm spacer on the DS10c on a diagonal attached to my C8 telescope.

My exposure times of deep sky objects were around 1-5 seconds with darks applied and using average stacking of 10 – 60 images for near real time viewing on my laptop screen of what the camera was “seeing” through my telescope.

The object, exposure, gain, histogram and sharpness settings are noted with each image. I used video mode (rather than looping mode) since all exposure times were less than 5 seconds. After slewing to a target and adjusting the settings for the best image, I turned on live frame averaging and enjoyed viewing the target details unfold!

In the following deep sky images, the one on the left is what I saw on the screen (no post processing) updating every 1-5 seconds depending upon the exposure setting, and I could zoom the image to see more detail. The image on the right is cropped (like a zoom) from the left image and is a slightly enhanced image of the target. I spent less than two minutes of “post processing” using the regular Microsoft Photos Edit/Enhance/Adjust functions to crop and produced the image on the right to show up better on the web. My camera settings are noted after the target name where s=seconds, g=gain, h=histogram range, vh=the histogram values were varied while stacking for Live HDR effect, srp=sharpness, stk=#stacked with averaging, b=binning value. The distance from earth is listed at the end in lightyears (kly=thousand light years, Mly=million light years)

If you right click on an image and select Open image in a new tab, then click on the new tab you will see a bigger version of the image.

M27 Dumbbell (or Apple Core) nebula - 5s 160g 0-255vh 200srp 60stk – 1400ly

M17 Omega (or Swan) nebula - 5s 160g 0-100h 200srp 20stk – 4200ly

NGC891 Spiral galaxy - 5s 160g 0-100h 200srp 10stk – 32Mly

M13 Hercules Cluster - 2b 1.2s 160g 0-100h 200srp 40stk – 23kly

M16 Eagle (or Star Queen) nebula - 5s 160g 0-100h 200srp 10stk – 5700ly

Having noticed Jupiter, Saturn and Mars shining brightly in the sky, after a couple of days I removed the Universe Focal Reducer and attached my 2.5x Barlow to check them out. These were very short exposures due to their brightness. Exposure time for planets were 2-10 milliseconds (ms) with 15-38 gain. The following images were “post processed” using the regular Microsoft Photos Edit/Enhance/Adjust functions to crop and enhance the details of the image I captured from the screen. There are really good planet post-processing applications that can scan through many images and only combine the best ones to produce much better detail. I just had fun live averaging all images and quickly seeing what I could see. The full field of view image is on the left and the cropped/enhanced image is on the right.

Jupiter - 7ms 13g 0-255h 20stk

Mars - 2ms 15g 0-200h 20stk 200srp

Saturn - 10ms 38g 0-255h 300srp 40stk

Later in the week, I installed my Hyperstar focal reducer which produces a nice wide Field of View at F2. With this configuration, the Hyperstar and the DS10c camera are at the top end of the telescope.

As before, the images below on the left are what I saw on the screen (no post processing) updating every 1-5 seconds depending upon the exposure setting. The images on the right are cropped (from the left image) and I only spent 1-2 minutes to quickly enhance the image using the regular Microsoft Photo viewer/editor.

If you compare the following M27 image on the left to the previous one of M27 without the Hyperstar installed you can get a feel for how much the Hyperstar increases the Field of View.

M27 Dumbbell (or Apple Core) nebula - 1s 70g 15-150h 20stk – 1400ly

NGC891 Spiral edge-on galaxy - 3s 80g 50-150h 30stk - 32Mly

M82 Bode's (or Cigar) galaxy M82 1s 80g 35-150h 10stk

NGC7293 Helix Nebula - 3s 80g 75-255h 20stk - 790ly

NGC253 Sculptor (or Silver Dollar) galaxy - 1s 80g 25-150h 20stk - 12Mly

M45 Pleiades (or Seven Sisters) cluster 3s 80g 25-150h 20stk - 430ly

NGC7635 Bubble nebula - 3s 80g 40-200vh 20stk – 1400ly

There is not much to zoom into the North American Nebula, so only the full unenhanced image is shown below.

NGC7000 North American nebula - 2s 80g 35-100h 20stk - 2600ly

M16 Eagle nebula - 1s 80g 50-150h 20stk - 5700ly

M8 Lagoon nebula - 750ms 35-150h 20stk - 4300ly

M20 Trifid nebula - 850ms 35-150h 200srp 30stk 5200ly

Here is another image of both M8 and M20 in the same field of view.

M8 & M20 Lagoon & Trifid nebula - 750s 35-150h 30stk 100srp - 4.3kly & 5.2kly

M17 Omega (or Swan) nebula - 1s 80g 54-150h 20stk - 4200ly

I wondered why I had difficulty when I tried observing the Whirlpool galaxy one night. With a little extra exposure time applied I realized why, looked up and saw how low the Whirlpool was on the horizon!

M51 Whirlpool galaxy - 1s 80g 40-150h 200srp 40stk - 28Mly ... Tree - about 40 yards

This image of the Andromeda Galaxy particularly stands out in my mind from this trip and nicely shows how big the field of view is with the Hyperstar installed. This is using a 3 second exposure time and average stacking 20 images. The initial image appeared after 3 seconds and then updated every 3 seconds averaging the next image. This is how it looked on the screen after 1 minute. Periodically I am reminded just how amazing video astronomy is and how fortunate we are to live in a time we have the tech available to see this while there are still dark skies nearby we can go to.

M31 Andromeda Galaxy - 3s 80g 50-150h 20stk – 2.5Mly

We liked being at this nice, quiet out of the way campground, and I really enjoyed the dark skies! It was just a days drive from our home. My wife and I have already talked about planning another trip there next year.

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65’ USB3 Active Extension Cable for RVA

5/15/2020

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A couple of years ago when I got my first USB3 video astronomy camera, the longest USB3 Active Extension Cable that worked well for me for video astronomy was 32’ long. Active extension cables require their own 5v power source usually at the far end of the cable in order to properly power the video camera and maintain a good signal back to your comptuer. This was long enough to use for Remote Video Astronomy at my home from my backyard to my laptop in our sunroom.

However, 32’ was not long enough to reach to our family room where I sometimes show live deep sky objects from my telescope outside on our large TV screen. When I needed more length, I put two 32’ cables together, but the second cable also required power. So a second power source mid-way was needed. I hoped there would be longer active USB3 cables available over time.

Recently I purchased a MutecPower 65 Foot Active USB Extension Cable 3.0 from Amazon for $70 which included an AC Power Supply.

The 5v power attaches at the end of the cable. The cable has 3 Extension chipsets for signal boosters (one at the end and two equally spaced along the cable).

In the past, I have sometimes used a portable battery containing usb power ports to provide 5v to power my active USB cables. I found I could use it with this 65’ cable as well if no AC power was available at the telescope. Each of the signal boosters have a blue led that turns on when power is applied.

So far I have been pleased with the quality of this 65 foot cable which provides plenty of power for my MallinCam DS10c video astronomy camera. The 3 signal boosters maintain the USB3 signal well back to my computer.

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Portable Basic+ Remote Video Astronomy

3/6/2020

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It was a cold night and the Moon was rising, but it was clear. We have had lots of rain and clouds recently and I have not had much viewing time this year. So, I decided to take advantage of the evening and use a basic Remote Video Astronomy (RVA) setup … inside our motorhome where it was warm. Through the use of a Video Astronomy camera and a simple means to extend the camera cable inside, along with a way to control the mount remotely, it doesn’t matter to you how cold it is outside since you are toasty warm inside.

It was not near as cold as shown in Matt’s outside setup in the prior 2/9/2020 blog post containing his article in the Cedar Amateur Astronomers newsletter. The only addition he needed to add for his Remote Video Astronomy setup was a USB3 extension cable attached to the cable of his Video Astronomy Camera and run it along with the mount hand controller cable through his convenient patio door. Be sure to read his article for some very good tips.

I also used a USB3 extension cable but added a SkyFi module at my telescope which allowed me to control the mount from inside wirelessly using SkySafari on my iPhone as shown in the following diagram.

I used a Mallincam DS10c Video Astronomy camera inserted into an MCR-80 Refractor on a SkyProdigy mount (which has auto align built in). This was very portable and was easy to set up near our Motorhome.

Since I was controlling the mount wirelessly, the only cable run I had was the USB3 extension cable snaked through a window on the Motorhome.

I was able to gently almost close the window to keep the cold out (a towel could be used to seal it better if needed) and operate using my laptop and phone from the couch inside the motorhome.

Before we changed over to a Motorhome, we pulled a camper and I had a small port installed on the side so I could easily pass through cables from my RVA equipment outside (see my 8/5/2015 blog post). With our newest rig, I decided to keep it simple and just run the USB extension cable through the slightly open window.

Portable

This is a basic+ RVA setup that is extremely portable and great to take with me on our travels. The telescope and mount are lightweight and easily carried in cases. The tripod and the cable bin could be put into a suitcase if you are flying to your destination (the mount could also be packed in a suitcase if needed).

The Video Astronomy camera is packed in the telescope carry case. The hand controller is in the mount/laptop carry bag. The plastic bin contains all the cables I need plus the SkyFi controller.

In addition to the DS10c camera, the telescope case has room for the camera nosepiece, a 2” 0.5x focal reducer, a 2” filter and a small spare camera.

The mount/laptop carry bag holds the mount, my laptop, tripod tray and hand controller.

These cases make it easy to organize and carry everything you need for your RVA setup.

Flexible

Instead of the MCR-80, I can take a Celestron 5” telescope that is also in a easy to carry case and fits nicely on the SkyProdigy mount.

I originally purchased the SkyProdigy 130 which comes with a great light weight 5” Newtonian telescope that is ready to go for Video Astronomy at F/5 with no need for a focal reducer and works great with Video Astronomy cameras. This telescope is not as compact but is easy to carry in its original shipping box. I have found the SkyProdigy mount is able to work with a variety of lightweight telescopes. Here is a link to my original 2014 post about the SkyProdigy 130 for RVA …

a-good-beginner-telescope-and-mount-for-rva.html

Super Power

I have a Rockpals 250-Watt Portable Rechargeable Lithium Battery Pack for super portability. This battery pack supplies 12v for the mount, 5v for the USB3 active extension cable and 115v for my laptop while I am next to my telescope. Since everything is then completely battery operated, I can set it up anywhere. In fact, I used this at the Grand Canyon Star Party to power my Evolution mount and laptop since we were set up in a parking lot with no electricity.

Video Astronomy anywhere

I am sold on using Video Astronomy for near real time viewing of the wonders in the night sky wherever we may go, whether I am next to my telescope or inside operating it remotely ... seeing objects in color and better than I could ever see looking through an eyepiece!

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2019 Grand Canyon Star Party (GCSP) - June 22-29

7/15/2019

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Every year amateur astronomers gather at the Grand Canyon for up to a week as volunteers to show visitors views of the heavenly sights at night through their telescopes. I went to my first Grand Canyon Star Party (GCSP) in 2017 and returned this past summer in June 2019 for my second time. The 2019 GCSP was particularly special in that the Grand Canyon had just been officially declared an International Dark Sky Park and had a special ceremony at Mather Point on the first day. Besides being located in a dark area of the US, the Grand Canyon has worked hard converting their lamps to downward facing dark-sky compliant lighting to maintain dark skies with a minimum of light glare. This was also the 100th anniversary of the Grand Canyon becoming a national park and the 50th anniversary of the Apollo lunar landing (the Grand Canyon National Park took part in helping train the astronauts in the processes of geology).

There were two areas in a large parking lot behind the visitor’s center for amateur astronomers to set up their equipment that were open to visitors from about 8-11pm. At the entrance to the parking lot there was a roped off area for those of us who used live Video Astronomy where we could show Deep Sky Objects (DSO) in near real time on monitors to small groups at a time.

The center picture below was taken during the day and shows my telescope (orange), table, chair, laptop (in the small tent) and LCD screen for visitor viewing. The picture on the right was taken at night showing how visitors can easily see on the LCD screen the image as seen by the camera through my telescope in near real time.

The remaining area was for traditional visual viewing where visitors can wait in line at a variety of telescopes to get a chance to look through the telescope and see planets and DSOs. You see quite an assortment of setups here, including large and unusual!

It is important to keep these two viewing areas separate so that, as visitors move further into the parking lot away from our monitors their eyes can adapt to the dark for better individual viewing through eyepieces. This is not an issue in the video astronomy area since the images we see are on displays that can be easily viewed by several people at a time, even if they have just left the brightly lit visitors center.

Here is are daily summaries and screen captures of some of the objects I viewed and discussed with visitors as they passed by. I sometimes slewed to the same target on various days, so these may not represent the exact images I showed on a particular day. The images for the 27-28 are a different field of view from the others due to the change in the reducer used. The images shown on the left is the full field of view seen by the camera without any enhancements. The image on the right is a zoomed in section of that image with about 1 minute of enhancement adjustments I made later using the standard Microsoft Photos application, so it shows up better here on the web site. I always like to talk about how far away an object is in light years.

6/22/19

My wife, Sharon, and I arrived on Saturday and set up our camper in the RV park at the Grand Canyon. This was very convenient since it was just a short drive from there over to the area where we set up our telescopes. I brought my Sky Prodigy 130 (an f/5 Newtonian) for my arrival day since it is very easy to set up and use with my Mallincam DS10c. I started with the Hercules Cluster, M13, and wound up showing it to many groups for most of the evening.

We wore shorts during the day at the Grand Canyon, and I have to admit that I forgot how quickly the temp drops after sunset and didn’t have enough warm clothing the first night and was shivering as I talked to the last of the visitors. I brought extra layers I could put on as the evening progressed for the rest of the week!

6/23/19

During the day I assembled my Celestron Evolution mount with my Celestron C8 telescope and Hyperstar which makes it a fast f/2 setup. This combined with my very sensitive Mallincam DS10c produced a spectacular field of view (FOV = 2.51 x 1.88 deg)!

M13 – Hercules Cluster (23 Kly)

M81 - Bode’s Nebula and M82 - Cigar Galaxy (12 Mly)

M8 - Lagoon Nebula (4.3Kly)

M20 - Trifid Nebula (5.2 Kly)

Most exposure times were 2-5 seconds and I used live average stacking. The Evolution mount is an Alt-Az mount that was much easier to set up than my equatorial mount I had used at the previous GCSP I attended. The night was very dark with no wind which was great for viewing. I estimated that I showed deep sky objects to about 200 visitors that night. I didn’t leave until 12:30 am, which was typical for most of the week.

6/24/19

I continued to use the Evolution/C8/Hyperstar/DS10c setup. It was another good dark night, but it was a little windy. It was obvious that I was showing “live” images because you could see the image blur a little when the wind blew

NGC6888 - Crescent Nebula (5.4Kly)

M27 - Dumbbell Nebula (1400 ly)

NGC6939 and NGC6946 - Fireworks Galaxy (22 Mly)

6/25/19

It was cloudy this evening!

So, what do you do when visitors show up? With a regular eyepiece telescope setup, you could talk about your telescope and what you could see if it wasn’t cloudy. But if you have a video astronomy setup, you can show them images on the LCD screen of the objects you viewed the night before.

And you can say I saw this image of the Dumbbell Nebula on that display last night through this telescope using that camera. Then you proceed to talk about the object. There was something special about them seeing the image on the screen and then looking at the telescope and camera that produced it the night before at that very spot that made it real to them.

6/26/19

It was a clear dark night and viewing was good again.

NGC7000 - North America Nebula (2600 ly)

M17 - Swan (4.2 Kly)

6/27/19

During the day, I removed the Hyperstar from the top of the Celestron C8 telescope and put the secondary mirror back in place. I installed my recently acquired Mallincam Universe 2” 0.5x focal reducer and the Mallincam DS10c on the lower end of the C8 telescope producing an f/5 setup. You can see that the field of view (FOV = 37.8 x 28.3 arcmin) is smaller than the one with the Hyperstar installed by comparing the left image here of the Dumbbell to the one shown under 6/24/19, but this FOV is nice when viewing objects the size of the Dumbbell or the Trifid (i.e. objects appear larger when FOV is smaller). Using a technique that Michael Carnes developed, I tried 5 second exposures but used additive stacking of 4-6 images to produce good near real time images. I adjusted the settings so the initial image was barely visible. Then as the additive stacking progressed, a really nice image appeared on the screen. We had a good crowd come by that Thursday night and I estimated about 250 people came by my site.

M27 - Dumbbell Nebula (1400 ly)

M20 - Trifid Nebula (5.2 Kly)

6/28/19

This was an interesting day. Jack Heurkamp, whose setup was next to mine in the parking lot, came by our campsite to say when he went to the parking lot my telescope had been blown over and was lying on the ground. I always remove the focal reducers and camera before I leave each night but left the telescope on the mount and placed a cover over it. Apparently, the cover made a good wind sail and blew my setup over either during the late night or morning. It must have hit my table on the way down, which slowed it down, and then the mount hit the asphalt first which absorbed the blow. Jack removed the telescope from the mount for me to protect it. When I got to my site, nothing appeared really broken and I set everything back up and added the Universe focal reducer and the DS10c camera and crossed my fingers. It was cloudy at first, so we started by showing previous night’s images. Then it cleared, I slewed to my first object and … all was well! Here is a nice image of the Whirlpool Galaxy I captured while showing it that night. We had a really good crowd come by again that night.

M51 - Whirlpool Galaxy (28 Mly)

6/29/19

The last night was going to be cloudy, so I just packed up all my gear during the day. A group of us had an enjoyable supper together that evening at the El Tovar. It was a great way to end the week.

Tourist stuff…

In addition to seeing the great dark skies at the Grand Canyon at night, we also got to be tourists during the day. Sharon and I were able to walk the rim trail and use the shuttles to see Yavapai Point and Lodge, the Geology museum, Hopi House, Verkampf Visitor Center, Lookout Studio, Kolb Studio, Bright Angel Lodge and some local wildlife. The days were very pleasant in the 70’s with only 20% humidity (you had to drink plenty of water though).

On Tuesday, everyone who was interested rode down to Tusayan for the IMAX film of the Grand Canyon and a pizza lunch. On Wednesday Sharon and I drove to the Cameron Trading Post (about 90 miles away) and stopped at Desert View and climbed the tower on the way back. Thursday morning, we got up at 4am and parked near the Hopi House and walked to the rim to watch the sun rise, and ate breakfast at El Tovar afterwards. On Friday, we drove down to Flagstaff with friends for a tour of the Lowel Observatory.

This was our longest camping trip we have made to date. We took 5 days traveling from Jackson, MS, to the Grand Canyon, spent 8 days at the Grand Canyon, and 5 days returning home. It was a great trip!

Related Posts...

My custom NexStar Hand Control Holder that I made using my 3D printer worked well! (See my 6/12/19 post). The Holder attached to a step stool next to me making the Hand Conrol easily reachable. Also my simple Velcro/fiberboard solution I attached to my monitor worked great, eliminating the glare from the control portions of the screen so all that visitors saw was the actual camera image. (See my 5/28/19 post)

If you are interested, here is a link to my post on how the Hyperstar is mounted on the Celestron C8 telescope:

remotevideoastronomy.com/blog/hyperstar-setup-guidelines

For the 2017 GCSP I used a Mallincam Xterminator II with a NexGen F3.3 reducer on the Celestron 8" telescope mounted on an Equatorial mount. I did not have any trouble that year with the wind, probably because the heavy weights of the equatorial mount made it more stable. (See my 6/30/2017 post).

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2019 Super Blood Wolf Moon Total Lunar Eclipse

1/23/2019

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Yep. You read the title right. Between the evening of Sunday, January 20th, and the early morning hours of Monday, January 21, a total lunar eclipse was observed in the Americas. The Moon was almost at its perigee (the closest that the Moon comes to the earth in its elliptic orbit), which is sometimes called a “supermoon” because the moon has a slightly larger-than-usual apparent size. It was also a “wolf” moon – the first full moon in a calendar year. During a total lunar eclipse, the moon takes on a reddish blood-like color. Thus the name “super blood wolf moon” for this particular total lunar eclipse. The next total lunar eclipse will not occur until May 2021.

I captured images once a minute before, during and after the total eclipse with a MallinCam DS10c camera inserted into my MCR-80ED refractor telescope on my SkyProdigy mount. I was inside where it was warm using Remote Video Astronomy to control the mount & camera and view the image live on my monitor.

I did periodically go outside and to look up and see how it looked to the eye. I also looked at it through my Canon Image Stabilizer 12x36 IS III Binoculars. Within a few moments of pressing down on the button on the top of these binoculars, the jittery handheld view transforms in to a nice stable floating image of the moon. (Its also great for viewing the stars and other bright objects without them jumping all over your field of view).

Speaking of moving around in the field of view, due to the long duration of this event and the tracking limits of my SkyProdigy Alt-Az mount, my image captures of the moon shifted some within the field of view during the eclipse. So I had to slightly adjust the telescope position every once in a while to move the moon’s image back toward the center of the image. You can see the shifting position of the moon in all of the images below. The following two images are of the full moon before the eclipse began and after it began to darken.

As it began to darken more, I began to wonder when I would see the “red blood” effect. I then realized I would only see black for the dark portion if I didn’t adjust my exposure. After lengthening the exposure slightly, the white portion became over exposed, but I then could see the red effect increase as the moon neared totality.

After awhile the moon began to brighten…

… ultimately requiring me to shorten my exposure to once again be able to see the details in the brightly illuminated portion of the moon. And when the eclipse was over, it returned to a normal full moon – but still a super one! 😊

If you compare the first image of the moon before the eclipse began and look through the images to the last one after it was over, the image of the moon appears rotated later in the evening. This is not due to the moon’s spin (once/month), but is due to the “field rotation” effect when using an Alt-Az mount.

I had thought about using an equatorial mount for viewing and recording the lunar eclipse to avoid any field rotation. The good news is the orientation of the moon would have remained the same in the captured image throughout the evening. But as the moon changes from being viewed to the east to being viewed to the west, a “meridian flip” occurs. The bad news is that to keep tracking the object past the meridian position with an equatorial mount, at some point you must stop tracking the object, flip your telescope from pointing east to point toward the west, and then resume tracking.

With an Alt-Az mount the telescope just keeps tracking the moon as it moves from east to west with no meridian flip to deal with. However, its view of the sky will rotate within the field of view. In fact, an Alt-Az mount “sees” the sky just like you do when you look up. If you had looked at the moon toward the east before the eclipse began and noted where a particular bright crater was located (like Tycho), and then looked again where the bright crater was located after the eclipse was over, you would realize the image of the moon that you now see has rotated somewhat. So an Alt-Az mount actually reproduces your point of view of the skies as you would see it looking up.

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DS8300cTEC First Light w C6 Hyperstar at f/2

2024 Eclipse from Riesel, TX

First use of Hyperstar 6 on Celestron 6” with DS10c

Arkansas Starry Night Viewing Site

DS26cTEC First Impressions

Dark Skies in Oklahoma

65’ USB3 Active Extension Cable for RVA

Portable Basic+ Remote Video Astronomy

2019 Grand Canyon Star Party (GCSP) - June 22-29

2019 Super Blood Wolf Moon Total Lunar Eclipse

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