Mallincam Astrophotos Photo Gallery by Utah JM at pbase.com

Mallincam Astrophotos

Images taken using a Mallincam VSS color video camera on a Celestron Nexstar 11 GPS with and without the Hyperstar focal reducer.

April 9th and 14th shots taken through the Hyperstar, no moon, nice clear nights. Brighter clusters taken at 128x Sense Up. Fainter clusters and bright nebulae Hyper normal mode, roughly 6 second exposure. Faint nebulae and galaxies taken at Hyper 2x, roughly 12 second exposure. Moon image taken from a 30 second AVI capture at 1/8000 stacked in Registax. On the 14th I bumped up the Hyper Normal exposure to 9 seconds, and a few Hyper 2x shots were therefore 18 sec. Sky glow makes anything but near zenith shots pointless at 18 seconds and F/2.

April 7 shots with a Celestron f/6.3 focal reducer and the Mallincam both with and without the MFR-3. This yielded a range of F-ratios from roughly F/4-F/6.

March 27 shots taken at various F-ratios from F/6.5 to F/10, typically 30-40 frames stacked in Maxim DL and processed in Photoshop.

Earlier shots largely with the Hyperstar, yielding roughly F/2.0, same processing. Oldest shots are using the MFR-3 focal reducer and single direct shots, no stacking or processing at all.

pages 1 2 3 4 ALL

Mallincam1.jpg	Mallincam2.jpg	20100414-01-NGC2404.jpg	20100414-02-NGC2805-2814-2820.jpg
20100414-03-M81.jpg	20100414-04-NGC4361.jpg	20100414-05-M83.jpg	20100414-06-NGC5084.jpg
20100414-07-M49Etc.jpg	20100414-08-NGC4754-4762.jpg	20100414-09-NGC4526Etc.jpg	20100414-10-NGC5740-5746.jpg
20100414-11-NGC5466.jpg	20100414-12-NGC5907.jpg	20100414-13-NGC6503.jpg	20100414-14-NGC6742.jpg
20100414-15-NGC6702-6703.jpg	20100414-16-NGC6269Etc.jpg	20100414-17-NGC6308-14-15.jpg	20100414-18-Abell39Planetary.jpg
20100414-19-Hickson76Abell2085.jpg	20100414-20-Abell2063.jpg	20100414-21-Abell2052.jpg	20100414-22-Abell2040.jpg
20100414-23-M80.jpg	20100414-24-M4.jpg	20100414-25-NGC6144.jpg	20100414-26-RhoOphichi.jpg
20100414-27-NGC6235.jpg	20100414-28-NGC6517.jpg	20100414-29-NGC6539.jpg	20100414-30-IC1276.jpg
20100414-31-Sharpless2-53.jpg	20100414-32-NGC6712-IC1295.jpg	20100414-33-M26.jpg	20100414-34-NGC6649.jpg
20100414-35-M20Trifid.jpg	20100414-36-M8Lagoon.jpg	20100414-37-NGC6559-IC4685.jpg	20100414-38-IC1274-Sh2-31-Sh2-32.jpg
20100414-39-M25.jpg	20100414-40-M15.jpg	20100414-41-NGC7094.jpg	20100414-42-NGC40.jpg
20100414-43-NGC7139.jpg	20100409-00-MoonCrescent.jpg	20100409-01-M3.jpg	20100409-02-Abell1781NE.jpg
20100409-03-M53.jpg	20100409-04-NGC5053.jpg	20100409-05-NGC4866Footprint.jpg	20100409-06-M90.jpg
20100409-07-M58.jpg	20100409-08-M87Etc.jpg	20100409-09-M86Etc.jpg	20100409-10-M84Etc.jpg
20100409-11-NGC5424-5434-5438Etc.jpg	20100409-12-NGC5839-45-46-50.jpg	20100409-13-M5.jpg	20100409-14-NGC5634.jpg

pages 1 2 3 4 ALL

comment |

Rock Mallin		28-Mar-2010 15:27
Fantastic results! M 92 and 6229 , Cat's Eye , Seyferts Sextet are among my favorites and many more , well done! Your well chosen object are simply amazing. I will be posting your link on the MallinCam website. I think people should see your work. Well Done!! Rock Mallin

Eduard Lampe		28-Mar-2010 12:07
Amazing gallery! Shows how small we are... V

Utah JM		19-Feb-2010 07:33
DSI can do both types of capture, the time lapse and full 30 fps. I've noticed that over USB trying to record at full speed and 720x480 it loses a lot of frames and I think that is just a limitation of USB itself rather than the imaging hardware. For these deep sky shots I am taking one frame per integration and they do get saved into their own folders as TIFFs, not movies, by Deep Sky Imaging. You can set the time between shots and the number of shots you want it to take in a sequence, or you can click manually and take a single frame at any time while you watch the incoming video feed. Once I exhaust the good targets with the Hyperstar I'll go back to the regular f/6.3 setup and try some planetary and moon stuff capturing at full 30fps, but you're correct it's a major hard drive hog. Even 30 seconds is something like 400-500 MB. Switching to S-Video is the most marked improvement over my first attempts as the composite image came through softer and had the appearance of compression even though it really didn't have any. The S-Video noise in a single frame capture like those at the bottom of the page here is more obnoxius, but Maxim and Deep Sky Stacker seem to remove it much more cleanly than they did the composite video noise.

Guest		19-Feb-2010 02:49
Sean, The uncompressed capture is beautiful. Can't get over how nice. Sure beats MPEG4 compressions doesn't it? What an improvement compared to my puny efforts recording to a personal media player!!! Does DSI software capture 30 fps or are you doing time lapse captures such as 1 frame per integration period on the camera? If time lapse capture, are single captured frames saved into a folder as tiffs? If you capture video at 30 fps video rate, how do you deal with drive storage space, just little video clips? Thanks for explaining! Doug Murphy

Utah JM		18-Feb-2010 07:22
Thanks Doug! The mid-February shots (Feb 12, 17, 18) were taken using the Hyperstar at F/2.0, exposure time from 7-20 seconds. I ran an S-Video cable from the camera into an Imaging Source DFG/USB-lt device, no compression, and did the captures with Deepsky Imaging. The earlier shots were at F/6.5 without the Hyperstar, 20-30 seconds and unstacked for the most part, everything else the same.

Guest		18-Feb-2010 02:06
Sean, beautiful. You have really squeezed out detail and have great dynamic range. What was the effective focal length and focal ratio in the Feb pics? What capture device and compression codec was involved? Congratulations! Doug Murphy

Utah JM		18-Feb-2010 01:49
Oh, regarding the Horsehead, the image there is just as it appeared on the screen at approximately 15 seconds integration (the VSS knob turned perhaps 1/6th turn clockwise from minimum and the hyper 2x mode. The shape and color weren't very contrasty but certainly visible. I wasn't guessing I was in the right place and trusting to luck on the final stack of images. If you have no lights to the south as I do (a VERY annoying sodium vapor streetlight) your mileage might be better.

Utah JM		18-Feb-2010 01:44
Hi Tom, thanks for the kind comments! I have a feeling you will love the new Edge and GEM. If I ever get rid of the current scope that would be it's replacement. The Alt-Az is nice until you get near the zenith, of course. I found I have to be careful and use no more than 5-7 second exposures or field rotation is quite visible at f/6.5 when I get to things approaching +75-80° altitude. With the Hyperstar it's less of an issue except at the very edges. I have taken a few vids of Saturn and some attempts at Mars but again it was at f/6.5 so the actual image size was tiny. I'll give it a try more seriously down the road but I have a feeling I just don't have the necessary magnification to make the tiny planets show much detail no matter how good the skies were. From a technical standpoint the Mallincam should be at least as capable as any of the standard planetary cameras out there. At least I have not heard anything to the contrary about why it would be inferior. Resolution has not been an issue, at f/10 and not rigorously collimated I split Castor with ease through the camera and some smaller stars down to 1.5-2 arc-seconds.

Tom Erickson		17-Feb-2010 16:02
Very nice pics Sean . All your galaxy and globular cluster shots look super. You must of had a good mount and tracking.Crisp and clean with no super bad star elongations. I got a 20in F5 Obsession and mallincam but its a bear to image plus a blown knee so its hard to climb the latter. Buying the new Celestron 11 in Edge HD SCT GEM and the hyperstar lens for it to get to f2.. My personel favorite image is the Horsehead neb. What exactly did you use? How difficult was it? Interested did you take a picture of Mars at this opposition? Interested to see what Mars looks like with a 11 in Celestron and Mallincam as I'm a life member The Mars Society. So far INMO the Mallincam HC doesnt do too good on planets. Im in Lutz Fl

click on thumbnails for full image

Type your message and click Add Comment

It is best to login or register first but you may post as a guest. Enter an optional name and contact email address. Name
Name Email
help	private comment