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My first Saturn photo was a blurry dot on a webcam, now I stack 2,000 frames from my backyard
Back in 2009 I duct taped a cheap Logitech webcam to my 6 inch dob in the backyard and got a fuzzy white smudge I was still proud of. Now I run a small planetary camera and stack around 2,000 frames in free software, and the rings actually show up. The jump from that first smudge to seeing the Cassini division came when I finally learned to let the scope cool for 30 minutes before imaging. Anyone else keep their old terrible first photos around just to compare?
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the_mary5d ago
That line about duct taping a webcam to a 6 inch dob got me, that is exactly the kind of chaos that gets you hooked. I read somewhere that the cooling thing matters way more than people think because a warm mirror makes its own little air currents that smear everything, so your 30 minute wait probably did as much for that Cassini division as the fancy camera did. I still have my first shot of Jupiter from like 2012 and it looks like a orange smear with a bite taken out of it. Sometimes I pull it up next to my newer stuff just to remind myself the gear was never the whole story.
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