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Recording a Video – Solar-System Astrophotography
Taking high quality images of planets, the sun or the moon often requires the use of lucky imaging techniques. A video
recording of the object with a high framerate is needed for that. In each frame of this video, the random seeing will be
frozen in time. By selecting the few lucky frames with minimal seeing and stacking them, a sharp and clear image of the
object can be created. This quick guide assumes planetary photography, but imaging the sun or moon works similar. (Use
an appropriate solar filter for imaging the sun, otherwise your camera and/or telescope will be damaged.)
Note: Omegon AstroPhotoCapture is just the capture program to operate the camera
and save the individual frames on your PC. Processing the exposures into a presentable
picture requires additional software.
1.
A high frame rate is important! If you have a veLOX or veTEC camera, make
sure that it is connected to a USB 3 port on your PC (usually marked by the
color blue)!
2.
Set the cameras Data-&Colorspace to 8-bit RGB.
3.
Focus and center the planet in the cameras field of view.
4.
Use
Video Mode
and a short
Exposure Time
of ca. 10-30ms. Adjust the
Gain
so that the planet doesn’t appear too dim but also not overexposed (white).
5.
Use the option
Region of Interest (ROI)
on the right side to specify a smaller
Region of Interest
and it set it
around the Planet. This vastly improves the
frame rate (shown on the bottom of the screen) by cutting away the
uninteresting regions in the image.
Note that the maximum frame rate is limited by the selected
Exposure Time
: At 30ms you can’t have a frame rate of more
than 33FPS (Frames Per Second). At 10ms a frame rate of more than 100FPS is impossible. The frame rate is also limited by
the camera model, the type of connection (USB 2 or USB 3) and your PC.
6.
Specify a desired length of the video. It is recommended to collect at
least 1000 frames of your target. So if you have a frame rate of (e.g.)
50 fps, set a video length of 20 seconds to capture about 1000
frames.
7.
Specify the folder where the finished video will be saved by the
software. Choose a suffix to help identifying the video later. The
name of the video file will contain the current date and time (in UT)
and your suffix.
8.
Now start taking your video by clicking the big
Start Recording
button on the left side.
9.
After capturing your frames, you need to continue with processing
to transform the video into a single sharp image of a planet. We
recommend the free programs
RegiStax
or
AutoStakkert!
For this
step.
Note: The captured video file might appear to have a different length then
specified when captured. Many video players show a video at a set rate of 25
fps. If you recorded 20 seconds of video at 50 fps, the resulting video can
appear to have a duration of 40 seconds. If you recorded at a very low
framerate, the video file can appear to be very short. Don’t worry: All your
captured frames are included in the video file for later processing.
