Taking Astrophotos

I thought it would be cool if I showed some of the video footage of the night sky that I've taken with the webcam and telescope.

First though, I'll explain a few things.

I've been using a low resolution (640x480 pixel) webcam to take the photos of the night sky.

The webcam is Philips SPC900NC which has been flashed to make it more sensitive to low light. The photos are taken by shooting video through the telescope without an eye piece. The video is captured on a laptop and it is then processed, at home, to create one picture. This processing, called stacking, is a matter of taking all the frames of the video and using the best bits to create a much clearer photo.

To capture the video I've started using the K3CCDTools which is is built for taking images of the night sky.

K3CCDTools can also stack the images but instead I use RegiStax 6. It is very good at what it does and there are so many settings to choose from but it can also be quite complicated. It's worth checking out some of the tutorials.

Check out the video below to see the before and after shots of the planets and the moon.