- RoboFocus Control Program (5.2.0a) Installs a combined control program and driver for the Technical Innovations RoboFocus focuser. This is an updated RoboFocus Control Program with a built-in ASCOM driver. This driver has the.
- Note: In the table, a 'client' is a program which uses the services of one or more ASCOM component object servers. 'A 'server' is a program or component that provides scriptable objects to clients. A program marked 'both.
- In my last post, Explore Scientific ED127 Robofocus Installation – Part 1, I talked about how I modified (bent) the attachment bracket to align the Robofocus properly with the telescope’s focus knob shaft. I also talked.
- Company 7, a well regarded international source of astronomical telescopes, surveillance instruments, long distance microscope, and spotting telescopes.
- Starlight Xpress MX516 Monochrome CCD Camera. The Starlight Xpress MX516 Monochrome CCD camera was the first CCD camera that I owned. For its cost its performance was very good.
- Astro-Physics Price List and Availability. Price List. Orders shipped to an Illinois address will be charged IL Sales Tax at 8.25%. No additional shipping charges for most shipments delivered to a U.S. address.
- Page 1 of 28 - PiAstroHub: RaspberryPi for Autoguiding+DSLR+GOTO - posted in Astronomy Software & Computers: Hello All, Raspberry Pi is a small low cost platform for my new project - PiAstroHub. I installed Open-PHD-guiding on.
CCD Imaging Equipment. The. Starlight. Xpress MX5. Monochrome CCD camera was the first CCD camera. I owned. For its cost its performance was very good. The MX5. In fact it has been called.
It uses the Sony ICX0. AL chip. which provides a reasonable 5. FOV of. 8x. 6 arcminutes on a LX1. It attaches to the PC's parallel. There are no intervening. The camera comes with software that not only. MX5. 16 but can perform most of the.
ASTROLABO EST HEBERGE MAINTENANT PAR ASTROSURF grâce à Jean-Philippe Cazard. Merci à Mathieu, Hervé, Eric, Pierre L., Régis, Jean-Noël, Anthony, Pierre, Jean-Sébastien et Lionel POUR LEUR DON. Pictured here is my 12.5' RCOS Ritchey-Chretién telescope with a piggybacked Takahashi FSQ-106 refractor, all riding atop an Astro-Physics model 1200 GTO equatorial mount. The Ritchey has a native focal ratio of f/9, but can.
The camera has very. I have taken images well in excess of 1. The camera also. has extremely good 'blue' response which makes it very suitable for color imaging.
For me, the MX5. 16 worked first time right out of the box. The. SBIG ST- 7. E CCD Camera.
Starlight Xpress MX5. It uses the Kodak KAF- 4. E chip which has. This gives the. ST- 7. E a larger FOV than the MX5. However, the real.
ST- 7. E and the MX5. First, let's discuss self- guiding. The ST- 7. E has a second. CCD chip mounted underneath the KAF- 4. E. This second chip, a.
Texas Instruments TC- 2. KAF- 4. 00. E is imaging. You can buy add on hardware for. MX5. 16, called STAR2. MX5. 16 selfguide but this. The MX5. 16 uses the same chip to.
This allows you to guide on a star within the. FOV as your image but has the disadvantage that exposure. CCD chip is spent. Now lets look at image binning. Binning is the ability of. CCD chip to create one.
The ST- 7. E allows you to create an 1. Clearly the resolution of the chip is reduced to.
Why. would you want to trade resolution for pixel size? The. An 1. 8 micron square pixel. This means that exposure durations are cut by a factor of 4 with 2x. This feature can be. LRGB. technique. With this technique, only the L or Luminance. The R, G and B. images can be taken at a much lower resolution without sacrificing.
By taking the R, G. B images using 2x. Finally, lets look at programmable cooling. The ST- 7. E has a. cooler that can cool the CCD chip to 3. C below the ambient. This is essential to reduce the dark current.
CCD chip which shows up as noise on your CCD image. However, even cooling the chip to 3. C below ambient will.
Fortunately, the dark current produced is. This means that we can take an image of the dark current. The dark frame is. To. ensure the same dark current is produced as in the original image. The ST- 7. E can be.
CCD chip to a given temperature and then keep. Why is this useful? With the. MX5. 16, the dark frame must be taken soon after the image to ensure. With the ST- 7. E you.
CCD chip to the temperature at which the. This means you can take the dark. You can even build up a. I have. noticed that the ST- 7. E produces a higher level of dark current than. MX5. 16 for a given temperature. However, this.
ST- 7. E makes it very. The overall quantum efficiency (sensitivity) of the ST- 7. E seems. to be higher than the MX5. This leads to shorter exposure.
However, the sensitivity of the ST- 7. E to blue. light is about half its sensitivity to red and green light. For color imaging, this means images taken through the blue. In contrast, the MX5.
One other difference between the MX5. ST7. E is the. shutter. The MX5. ST- 7. E. has a mechanical shutter. The mechanical shutter of the ST- 7. E. enables dark frames to be taken very easily as you simply close the.
With the MX5. 16 you have to cover. OTA or close the mirror in the flip mirror.
However, the mechanical shutter does mean that the shortest. MX5. 16. I. purchased the. SBIG ST- 2. 00. 0XM CCD Camera. November 2. 00. 5. It has similar functionality to the ST- 7.
E but has. a larger, higher resolution chip. The ST- 2. XM uses the Kodak. KAI- 2. 02. 0M CCD chip. This is 1. It also features a TC- 2. H chip as the. tracking CCD which has 2.
CCD used. in the ST- 7. E. This increases the chance of finding a suitable. The ST- 2. 00. 0XM also has a USB connection to the.
PC which makes image download a lot faster than the parallel cable. ST- 7. E. I chose the ST- 2. XM over the. ST- 8. XME because I wanted an ABG camera with a large, high resolution.
The ST- 2. 00. 0XM's ABG chip has a higher sensitivity than. ABG version of the ST- 8. E and is higher resolution with only a. It also costs $1. In 2. 00. 8 I. purchased the. SBIG STL- 1. 10. 00.
M CCD Camera. . It has similar functionality to the ST- 2. XM but has. a much larger chip. The STL- 1.
The Kodak chip used is similar in. ST- 2. 00. 0XM but its 9 micron pixels mean that. This camera. also has a built in filter wheel that will accept 5 5.
In all other respects the camera is very similar in features and. ST- 2. 00. 0XM. The. SBIG CFW8 filter wheel can be attached directly in front of the. ST- 7. E (as shown) or to the MX5.
T- ring connector. It is. The red, green and blue filters have an. IR) blocking coating which means you don't need an. IR filter placed permanently in the optical path.
This has an added advantage when using the LRGB colour imaging. With this technique, the L or Luminance image is a. CCD image taken through a clear filter. It should be the. Unike the R, G and B images it does.
IR filter in place. An RGB filter. IR blocking filter in the optical path.
L image being taken through a clear filter/IR. This will lead to a longer exposure on the. L image as the IR light is blocked. The CFW8 filter does not. IR filter and so the L image duration is lower. The CFW8 comes with its own DOS based control software but I. Maxim. DL to control it.
When attached to the ST- 7. E, the wheel is. controlled through the ST- 7. E parallel cable attached to the PC. When it is attached to another camera it is controlled via the.
PC. With the CFW8 and Maxim. DL you can. set up an RGB exposure sequence and leave it to run unattended. Once each image is completed Maxim.
DL instructs the filter wheel to. Being able to set up an automatic sequence like this, with a very. Jupiter where the fast rotation of the planet means you. RGB images to avoid. The Canon 1. 0D Digital SLR camera is quite capable of producing. Solar, Lunar and Planetary imaging. With it's big. CMOS chip (2. 3x.
Lunar or Solar disk in one image even at. The fact that it. Lunar and. Solar images to be taken without the need to stop down the LX2. SCT. With the TRC8. N3 timer you can take the long.
As the camera. is not cooled, exposure duration is limited to around 5. Much longer than that and the dark noise becomes. However, by stacking multiple 5 minute. An excellent. review of the Canon 1.
D SLR can be found on Johannes. Schedler's website. The Canon 4. 0D Digital SLR camera is very similar. Canon 1. 0D. The main differences are: It has smaller pixels (5. Power efficiency is greatly improved over the. D. It's possible to take over 1 hour of 1. D with the internal battery pack. The LCD screen is much larger.
It has a live view mode which can show you. LCD screen. This. D. Webcam. The To. UCam Pro II Webcam is ideally suited for high resolution. It has a sensitive 6.
CCD detector with 5. AVI file. This makes it very. A small percentage of these images (say 1.
As a large number of images will have been taken in. AVI (say 2. 00. 0), a fairly large number of good images will be. If the 2. 00 best images are added together, the. This image can then be processed. Unsharp Masking and Deconvolution software to yield high.
To attach the webcam to the telescope you. T- ring adapter that lets you attach it to your telescope. You will also need to use an infra- red filter with the. I. obtained my webcam, T- ring adapter and 1.
True Technology. The 1. T- ring adapter. When taking images with the webcam it is important that you set. Compressing the image stream would mean you lose. To control the webcam you can use the software that comes bundled. However I use Astrosnap.
A good review of the To. UCam Pro II and suggestions for exposure. The. Takahashi FS- 6. C is an f/5. 9 6. Apochromatic Refractor. It. The focal length can be reduced to.
Takahashi Sky 9. 0. This increases the field of view still further.
CCD chips and lowers. Apochromatic refractors make excellent telescopes for colour imaging.
Chromatic aberration is where the. I obtained my Takahashi FS- 6. C from True. Technology. I have used it mounted piggyback on the LX2. RCX4. 00 using. mounting rings and rails made by BC& F. The.
True Technology Flip Mirror Finder and Filter Holder serves two. The first is to act as an aid in centering and.
CCD camera. It does this by putting. CCD. camera. When the mirror is down, the light passes through to. CCD camera as normal. When the mirror is inclined at 4.
CCD camera and into an eyepiece. This allows the observer to see exactly what the CCD camera is. It is possible to. CCD camera. This means that an approximate focus for the. This has dramatically reduced the time it takes. Once the object is focussed in the.
A side benefit of the moveable mirror is the ability to. CCD dark frames very easily. Simply move the mirror to the 4.
CCD enabling a. dark frame exposure to be taken. The second purpose served by this device is that of a filter. The unit comes with. You can screw a standard 1.
A plate/filter assembly can then. You can remove and insert plate/filter. As well as the slot for filters, the unit also.
IR filter to be permanently mounted in front of. CCD camera. True Technology sells a set of 1.
RGB. and IR filters suitable for color imaging with this unit. The set comes with a clear glass filter which has the same thickness. The Meade. 2 inch Flip Mirror is similar in functionality to the True. It does not have the filter.
CCD cameras and DSLRs with larger imaging chips. It also allows you to adjust the. CCD chip. The flip mirror comes with a. CCD cameras. This allows. A cylindrical focusser is provided to help you focus.
All the CCD camera adapters have. This is much easier than the True Technology flip. Attaching. the Celestron. LX1. 0 or LX2. 00 reduces its focal.
This gives an increased field of view both for. CCD imaging (see What. Focal Length Should You Use?). Also, the shorter focal length. CCD images by approximately.
The exact reduction in the focal length depends on the distance. CCD chip from the focal reducer. The reduction is. R=1- (D/F) where R is the focal reduction, D.
Company Seven | C- 7 News and Developments 1. May 2. 01. 1: Company Seven delivered another interesting optical system for NASA to fly later in 2. This is a ruggedized and shock/vibration resistant catadioptric system with all optical components made fully quartz (fused silica), and with superbly engineered and applied high transmission coatings optimized for its designed transmission application. In order to maintain perfect focus at all operating temperatures the construction of the tube assembly and many mechanical components are largely of Invar, an ultra- low expansion aerospace grade alloy. New ruggedized quartz/invar 1. NASA, delivered by Company Seven on 1. May 2. 01. 1 (image sizes 4.
Click on images to see enlarged views, 1. March 2. 01. 1 Event: Company Seven Supporting NASA Sun- Earth Day educational activity. This year's theme was be 'Ancient Mysteries- Future Discoveries', opening the door to a much deeper understanding of our Sun and its impact on our Earth across the ages. We will also consider how the Sun continues to impact our daily lives. Because the event day was on a Sunday this year, Company Seven's showroom activities in support of this occurred on Saturday 1. March. 2. 0 March 2.
Event: Company Seven Supporting NASA Sun- Earth Day educational activity. This year's theme was a celebration of the International Year of Astronomy. December 2. 00. 8 Event: Martin Cohen of Company Seven is guest of the Worchester Polytechnic Institute "Integrative Materials Design Center" speaking on the subject of "Long Distance Microscopy for Materials Evaluation". The WPI Integrative Materials Design Center (i. Mdc) is formed through an industry/government- university alliance, and its program is built in direct collaboration and with active participation and insight from its industrial/government partners. The center is conducting fundamental research which addresses well- identified industrial applications of general interest and relevance to the manufacturing sector - an "Application- Driven- Design" approach.
Consortium members include: Alcoa, Army Research Laboratories, Benet Laboratories, Boeing, Caterpillar, General Dynamics Land Systems, General Motors, Hamilton Sundstrand, Harley- Davidson, Honda, Mercury marine, NASA Langley, Pratt & Whitney, P& W Rocketdyne, Rio Tinto Alcan, Sikorsky. Read more about the work of the WPI i. Mdc and an overview of the presentation by Mr.
Cohen. 2. 0 March 2. Event: Company Seven Supporting NASA Sun- Earth Day educational activity.
This year's theme will be "Space Weather Around The World". August 2. 00. 7 Company Seven Acquires Biosphere 2 Astronomical Observatory.
This is designated our 'MCCM' Observatory Project. The system will be relocated to Maryland and established as part of our own science education facility. March 2. 00. 7 Company Seven supporting NASA annual 'Sun- Earth Day 2.
This year's theme will be "Living In The Atmosphere of The Sun". March 2. 00. 6 Company Seven supporting NASA annual 'Sun- Earth Day 2. This year's theme features natural and artificial eclipses! November 2. 00. 5 Company Seven supporting Howard Astronomical League "Mars Watch" event from 5: 0. Company Seven provided a telescope and staff to see the Opposition of Mars at the Belmont Mansion, off Elibank Drive in Elkridge, Maryland. H. A. L. and Howard County Community College jointly sponsored this event which was open to the public at large.
Company Seven assists at such events as a public service insisting on no promotional efforts on our behalf. The system furnished by Company Seven was our Astro- Physics 2. EDF telescope with a Astro- Physics 9. Stowaway "finder" telescope on an Astro- Physics 1. GTO German Equatorial Mount. The system was equipped with our Baader Mark V Großfeld Binocular Head, a top of the line system providing high resolution binocular views through the telescope.
We employed a selection of Tele. Vue Panoptic, Tele. Vue Nagler, Tele. Vue Radian, and a matched pair of Carl Zeiss Abbe Orthoscopic series eyepiece sets and filters. While this was a good "practice run" for us, the seeing conditions were marginal with notable humidity and sky glow. Therefore, the telescopes were limited by seeing conditions to moderate magnifications on the order of 3.
X or less. Regardless of the seeing limitiations, the large number of visitors were nonetheless enthralled by Mars. Later in the session we did study a number of the brighter popular deep sky objects, and later Saturn! June 2. 00. 5 Martin Cohen of Company Seven is among a panel of three in a discussion with the program host about amateur astronomy technology on the WAMU American University Public Radio "Kojo Nnamdi Show" weekly "Tech Tuesday" program. As described by the AMU staff "technology is driving a revolution in amateur astronomy.
Improvements in telescopes, computerized data, cameras, and more means backyard stargazers now have access to information that only a few years ago would have been limited to the hands of experts. A look at the technology of amateur astronomy - - and what you might discover by just looking up.". To read an more in depth review of the program with links to the program Web Site and a link to download the program in Real Audio file format please click here. March 2. 00. 5 Company Seven supporting NASA annual 'Sun- Earth Day' educational activities. This year's theme is "Ancient Observatories Timeless Knowledge".
March 2. 00. 4 Company Seven supporting NASA annual 'Sun- Earth Day' educational activities. This year's theme features the Transit of Venus coming 8 June 2. July 2. 00. 3 Martin Cohen of Company Seven is among the guest speakers for Smithsonian Institution Resident Associates Summer Program "Amateur Astronomy: It's All in the Stars … and Comets, Planets, and Moons". Topics and speakers include. JUL 1. 0, How to Catch a Comet, David Levy. JUL 1. 7, Your Telescope, Martin Cohen - the location of this session changed to. S. DILLON RIPLEY CENTERJUL 2.
Heavenly Bodies' Shape and Motion, David Dunham. JUL 3. 1, Using Cheap Webcams and Freeware, Geoff Chester. AUG 7, Upstairs/Downstairs, David De. Vorkin. AUG 1. 4, Following Stars, Janet Mattei. To read an overview of the presentation by Mr. Cohen, click here.
July 2. 00. 3 Company Seven supporting Howard Astronomical League "Mars Watch" event from 1: 0. March 2. 00. 3 First Light: Glenelg Country School Observatory Activation with Astro- Physics. EDT Apochromat and Technical Innovations"Pro Dome". November 2. 00. 1 Company Seven activates new Day. Star Calcium K Line Filter for Solar Observing! August 2. 00. 1 Reactivated: Refurbished University Of Maryland Observatory Telescope Modernized.
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