Some Mintron images
The video output of the Mintron MTV12V1EX was recorded through the analog
input of a Canon MV500i
camcorder. This enables CCD imaging in the field without having a PC close
to the telescope.
All images by Hartwig Lüthen
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NEW: Rosetta spacecraft's first earth swingby
NEW: Sprites
detected on video
Artificial Satellites
I tried to manually track the ISS through a Celestron 8 at f=4000mm. Some of
the images are still
overexposed.
Moon
These lunar shots were taken using a Celestron 8 SCT at f=4000 or 6000mm. 500 images were grabbed and stacked with Giotto. Only the best 11% of the images were used.
Alphonsus,
2003 Feb 9
Apenin/Kaukasus,
2003 Feb 9
Clavius/Tycho,
2003 Mar 13
Planets
Jupiter with the Mintron
Jupiter and Saturn
taken by a camcorder held behind a 12mm eyepiece.
Mars 2003, also taken by a camcorder
NEW: Jupiter and Saturn, taken with a webcam
Meteors
The 8min video for this image was taken during the Leonid meteor storm of 2003 using a 50mm f/0.9 C-Mount lens on Tenerife. The video frames were stacked using Marc Vornhusen's experimental Sky Patrol software-
The 55min video for this image was taken in moonlight using a 16mm f/1.6 lens and stacked as described above.
Deep-Sky
These fotos were all taken using the Mintron MTV-12V1EX camera using a Celestron 8 SCT. The old fork mount from the early 80ies is not a very adequate platform for classical deep sky photography. No further drive corrections were made. In my scrapbox I found an achromat to reduce the focal length to f/4.
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| reducing a C8 to f/4 | ready for action |
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| The mintron camera is hooked to the Canon MV500i digital camcorder using the SVHS port. The camcorder is thus used as a high quality video recorder. A comouter at the observing site is not required. | The complete setup under the night sky. Light sources are the Mintron LED and the camcorder display. |
For deep-sky images I normally use the Mintron in the 128 frames sense up modes. This means that 128 images are stacked inside the camera. With the 50Hz PAL format, every 2.56 sec the video image at the video output of the camera is updated. Bright deep sky objects can be easily seen in the streaming video.
Back home the images are grabbed using the timer controlled mode of the excellent Giotto freeware. I used Fitswork (also freeware) for stacking the images.
M42 Orion nebula
M65
M66
NGC 3628
M57
M27
M104
Comet C/2001 RX14
C/2002
T7 and 2001 Q4 from Namibia
Comet Bradfield
and the Hamburg skyline