Page 1 of 1

Lunar 10 panel mosaic with £7.99 webcam

Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2018 2:02 am
by turfpit
This 10 panel mosaic of a 91% waxing moon was captured by SharpCap 3.1 using a Sweex WC035V2 webcam which cost £7.99 from Amazon.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00 ... UTF8&psc=1

lunar-10-panel-mosaic.png
lunar-10-panel-mosaic.png (134.86 KiB) Viewed 3317 times
CameraSettings.txt
(487 Bytes) Downloaded 286 times

This is a 3 panel mosaic of the terminator of the 63% waxing moon
lunar-terminator-3-panel-mosaic.png
lunar-terminator-3-panel-mosaic.png (76.05 KiB) Viewed 3317 times
Equipment used:
  • Altair Lightwave 66ED-R refractor
  • Celestron CG5 mount
  • Sweex USB2 webcam with IR cut filter
Process:
  • Rotate camera in scope until handset buttons correspond with up/down & left/right motion
  • Capture 10 panels to cover the surface, using an overlap of around 25%
  • 400 frame AVI's
  • Stacked with Autostakkert!3, best 25% frames of each capture
  • 10 panels stitched with Microsoft's Image Composite Editor (ICE), free download
  • Sharpened in Registax 6, Layer 2 set to 10%
  • Adjust contrast and brightness in GIMP
Setting the camera in the telescope to ensure the handset buttons and movement correspond made the final processing easier as no image rotation was needed.

The stitching process was straightforward - just drag and drop files and follow the actions at the top of the screen.

Image-Composite-Editor.PNG
Image-Composite-Editor.PNG (159.49 KiB) Viewed 3317 times
The individual images were 640 x 480 with the resultant mosaic being 1264 x 1399.

Dave

Re: Lunar 10 panel mosaic with £7.99 webcam

Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2018 11:51 am
by oopfan
Remarkable!

Re: Lunar 10 panel mosaic with £7.99 webcam

Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2018 6:51 pm
by admin
Excellent images Dave - can I share the full-res versions on the SharpCap gallery to show what is possible with entry level cameras?

cheers,

Robin

Re: Lunar 10 panel mosaic with £7.99 webcam

Posted: Sat Mar 31, 2018 12:32 am
by turfpit
Robin

Happy for these to be in the gallery. I have emailed you the full TIF files.

Dave

Re: Lunar 10 panel mosaic with £7.99 webcam

Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2018 6:14 pm
by turfpit
Thanks for adding these to the gallery Robin.

I suppose I will be known as Ten Dollar Dave from now on :)

I think the new website is cool plus it displays well on tablet and mobile.

Dave