Lumenera Cameras for Solar System Webcamming:  Imaging Setup

TMB 152 6 inch APO Refractor 1200mm focal length on Mountain Instruments MI-250 GoTo Mount Lumenera SKYnyx2-2C Color Webcam with Televue Powermate 4x
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The result:  Jupiter 7/2/06  0400 GMT through the SKYnyx 2-2 color webcam.  500 frames stacked and processed in Registax.  No UV/IR cutoff filter was used for this image. Atmospheric seeing conditions were about average for this session.  Jupiter was just past meridian transit.  A Televue Powermate 4x telextender was used for this image and the image to the right, producing an effective focal length of 4800mm and an image scale before processing of 0.19 arc second per pixel.

Same camera, but with UV/IR cutoff filter in use.  The TMB optics are already so well-corrected, I could see no improvement in resolution details with the filter in use.  These results should not be intended to be applied universally though, as different models and designs of telescope optics and webcams correct UV and IR focus to varying degrees.  With many telescope and camera combinations, the use of a UV/IR cutoff filter or just an IR cutoff filter will still be advisable for best results.



Jupiter on 6-26-06 through the Lumenera Infinity Mono 2-1 webcam:
  • 500 frames shot on each LRGB channel.
  • Atik manual filter wheel using LRGB Astronomik filters.
  • Each filter has built-in IR-block filtering.
  • Each channel processed separately in Registax, then one final stacked frame for each of the LRGB channels color combined in Maxim.
  • Final post-processing done in Adobe Photoshop (unsharp mask, color balancing, and other filtering tools).
  • Televue Powermate 2.5x used for an image scale of 0.32 arc-second per pixel before processing

Wade Van Arsdale
Little Rock, AR., USA
July 6th, 2006