Last night was a good clear night (for my location) so I decided to give my XT-828 another try. I am VERY pleased with the results!
Due to the cold weather, I did all my “viewing” from inside by the fire! I rolled my CG-5 mount and C8 telescope out to my marked place on my driveway and did a basic polar align using my polar scope. The XT-828 was already in place with a focal reducer and Lumicon Deep Sky Filter. I turned on the mount and started a Star Sense Auto Align. While it was aligning I unrolled my active USB cable connected to my powered hub at the telescope, routed it through the garage into my den next to the fireplace. When I went back outside the Auto Align had finished. The time from beginning to roll out the telescope to Auto Align completion was less than 15 minutes. Then using the hand controller I slewed to Capella, put my Bahtinov focus mask on the end of the telescope and adjusted the focus using a display at the scope. I removed the focus mask and returned inside for my viewing session.
I used the MiloSlick MallinCam Control software to control the camera, view and adjust the image in real time and capture screen images. Using the MiloSlick control software, I turned on the MallinCam color bars and adjusted the video capture brightness until the black bar turns from light gray to black (48). I then adjusted the contrast until the white bar is a nice white color (87). I set the XT-828 cooling to -20c (I use fans on my XT-828) and put it in hyper mode. Gain is set to zero (yes, gain=0)! During the 3 minute startup wait, I went back outside and put a dark cloth over the end of the telescope. I came back in and set the exposure to 20 seconds and let it process a few images, and then used the MiloSlick software to capture a 20 second dark frame and saved it. I went out and removed the dark cloth and came back in to being my viewing session.
Below are untouched screen grabs of what I saw on my laptop inside (and you will see that something was generating faint noise interference lines that I need to track down and eliminate). The only real time processing used was MiloSlick’s histogram and dark frame subtraction. I used 20 second exposure time all evening. So these are the actual images I saw on my screen, updated in near real time every 20 seconds.
M1 - Crab Nebula (Magnitude 8.4):
Due to the cold weather, I did all my “viewing” from inside by the fire! I rolled my CG-5 mount and C8 telescope out to my marked place on my driveway and did a basic polar align using my polar scope. The XT-828 was already in place with a focal reducer and Lumicon Deep Sky Filter. I turned on the mount and started a Star Sense Auto Align. While it was aligning I unrolled my active USB cable connected to my powered hub at the telescope, routed it through the garage into my den next to the fireplace. When I went back outside the Auto Align had finished. The time from beginning to roll out the telescope to Auto Align completion was less than 15 minutes. Then using the hand controller I slewed to Capella, put my Bahtinov focus mask on the end of the telescope and adjusted the focus using a display at the scope. I removed the focus mask and returned inside for my viewing session.
I used the MiloSlick MallinCam Control software to control the camera, view and adjust the image in real time and capture screen images. Using the MiloSlick control software, I turned on the MallinCam color bars and adjusted the video capture brightness until the black bar turns from light gray to black (48). I then adjusted the contrast until the white bar is a nice white color (87). I set the XT-828 cooling to -20c (I use fans on my XT-828) and put it in hyper mode. Gain is set to zero (yes, gain=0)! During the 3 minute startup wait, I went back outside and put a dark cloth over the end of the telescope. I came back in and set the exposure to 20 seconds and let it process a few images, and then used the MiloSlick software to capture a 20 second dark frame and saved it. I went out and removed the dark cloth and came back in to being my viewing session.
Below are untouched screen grabs of what I saw on my laptop inside (and you will see that something was generating faint noise interference lines that I need to track down and eliminate). The only real time processing used was MiloSlick’s histogram and dark frame subtraction. I used 20 second exposure time all evening. So these are the actual images I saw on my screen, updated in near real time every 20 seconds.
M1 - Crab Nebula (Magnitude 8.4):
NGC 891 – Galaxy (Magnitude 9.9):
NCG 1514 Planetary Nebula (Magnitude 10.9):
NGC 2024 - Flame Nebula (Magnitude 10.0):
IC 434 - Horsehead Nebula (Magnitude 7.3):
M33 – Pinwheel Galaxy (Magnitude 5.7 – was low in the sky near street light area):
Although it was a clear night, I do not live in a dark sky area. As I have said before, I live near a city with notable sky glow to the south, and I am in a neighborhood with street lights. My house blocks direct light from hitting my telescope, but if I walk 10 steps down my driveway from the telescope, here is what I see.
Street Light (Magnitude Very Bright):
It is amazing what you can see with Video Astronomy under these conditions!
For more information on the XT-828, see my December 12/22/2015 post "MallinCam X2 camera upgrade to XT-828".
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