A Quote by Sir Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal of Great Britain



Telescopes are in some ways like time machines...
They reveal galaxies so far away that their light has taken billions of years to reach us. We in astronomy have an advantage in studying the universe, in that we can actually see the past. We owe our existence to stars, because they make the atoms of which we are formed. So if you are romantic you can say we are literally starstuff. If you're less romantic you can say we're the nuclear waste from the fuel that makes stars shine. We've made so many advances in our understanding. A few centuries ago, the pioneer navigators learnt the size and shape of our Earth, and the layout of the continents. We are now just learning the dimensions and ingredients of our entire cosmoc, and can at last make some sense of our cosmic habitat.



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Saturday, June 11, 2011

My first Astro image.

For an amateur astronomer, it’s an Amazing feeling to take my first astro image! I have been trying to take a picture of the moon for quite some time now. Finally I have some success. Believe me guys it’s a treat.

It took me a few months to figure out what the problem was. It was a focal length issue and the webcam image sensor was not able to reach the focal point of my Zhumell 10 inch. I took out the image sensor from the webcam and placed it half way into the eyepiece hole. Luckily, the hole was big enough to accommodate the image circuitry. I taped this arrangement inside the eyepiece to avoid any disturbances. With little adjustments to the eyepiece focusing...BAM! I had the image of the moon.

So for guys who are trying to take a picture of the moon with a webcam and you see that your image is blurry no matter what you do.. You know it’s a focal length issue. Just try to do what I did above and you should be able to get a view. I used wxAstrocapture to record an AVI file and then used Registax 6 to process the image. I know that there are tons of images of the moon out there... but for me this image will always be special.
My first astro image! A processed file.



Specifications of the instruments used:
A Zhumell 10 inch dobsonian (No equitorial mount)
A logitech webcam (CCD sensor, non moded)
and A laptop :)

Many more images to follow...

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