Has Anyone Tried

[naios]

Have any of you Dobs owners tried the following method (maybe you can tell me if I am wasting my time):

With the digicam locked in position (i.e. universal mount), hone in in on your target (ex. Jupiter). Begin filming a movie.

Completely move to the Telrad and manually guide the scope on target (become a manual tracking system) during the time in which you film. In other words, you let the camera capture the movie while only focusing on keeping the target tracked with the Telrad during this time (i.e. never looking through the camera viewfinder). And then using Registax, etc. to process.

My universal mount is on it's way, I have a Telrad and I've been thinking of this approach and whether its worthwhile attempting.

[Fr. Wayne]

I've tried holding my camcorder w/led screen over my dob for moon shots but needed too much support equipment (2 more hands) to pull it off. You could probably catch a whole bunch of 3 sec clips that when editted could surprise viewers, but once you use < 10mm lens even the telrad would be a lost cause. Some people can develop a feel for the every 3 sec or so adjustment that needs to be made. If you camera had an LED screen to help you center it, it could work fairly well.

[Galactic2000]

I agree with Fr. Wayne.....

I Know it will require much more precision than guiding via your Zero power Telrad finder.....getting good crisp vibration free movement by hand, while imaging is nearly impossible via any scope....especially if you want decent details on the planets and to capture their moons..... this is why most dobbies that do imaging have been placed on a poncet type platform for smooth tracking!

As with most astronomical imaging this requires much more precision than the human hand or eye can accomplish manually as far as tracking is concerned.

Go ahead, Try it, you'll see...........Definitely a big waste of Time!........................but good luck anyway!

[iceman]

That's not the best way to do it. The accuracy required would be too great. While you may succeed sometimes in keeping the planet in the FOV (at low magnifications),
1) The planet would be distorted in almost every frame due to your moving the scope too quickly etc
2) At high magnifications it would be virtually impossible.

The best way to do it (which is how I started out with my dob, before I got an EQ platform), is to record while the planet drifts through the FOV, then re-align, and record again. Re-align, record again.

You can do this for as many passes as you have patience for, or to a time limit due to planet rotation.

You then recombine those separate videos into one, using a program like Virtual Dub. Now you have 1 video, you can process it in registax.

I wrote an article about Dob-based imaging:
Astrophotography with a dob

It describes that technique and much more, so I hope you find somethign useful in it.

[Fr. Wayne]

Iceman ices the cake as no one I know of (yet) can keep the view more frozen than he. Good luck in experiments which I believe are never a waste of time.

[naios]

Thanks very much everyone. I am sure you helped save me from wasting even more time then I know I am already going to waste trying to get this right.

Cheers