New "DSI Pro" and Wireless AutoStar from Meade!

I just had an e-mail from Meade annoucing two new products: the "Deep
Sky Imager Pro" http://www.meade.com/dsipro/ and the "Wireless
Autostar II for LX200GPS and RCX400 Telescopes"
http://www.meade.com/autostar/wireless_autostar.html.

"The new Deep Sky Imager Pro is the latest innovation from Meade
Engineering. Over two hundred percent more sensitive with four times
the resolution of the color Deep Sky Imager, the Deep Sky Imager Pro is
a high-performance, easy-to-use monochrome CCD that can take you to the
next level in shooting and processing stunning deep sky images of
galaxies, nebulae, star clusters and planets. Aside from the amazing
retail price of only $399, the Deep Sky Imager Pro is the very first
commercially available CCD camera designed to incorporate NASA's
Drizzle Technology (developed originally for the Hubble Space
Telescope) that can correct field rotation (De-rotating the image),
eliminating the need to polar align the telescope, Drizzle can also
increase image resolution and field of view! The Drizzle feature works
with any AutoStar controlled Meade telescope."

$399; RGB filter set $199; Camera and filters together $499.
Availability: End of April.

"A milestone leap in telescope control, now you can operate your
LX200GPS or RCX400 telescope wirelessly from over a hundred feet away!
Just plug in the wireless receiver into the hand box port of the drive
base, turn on the Wireless AutoStar II controller and you'll have
wireless control of every electronic feature of the telescope. The
system uses radio frequency signals instead of infrared, so you won't
have to be in direct line of site for proper operation. Each controller
is on a separate communication code so that any number of astronomers
observing together will not interfere with each other."

$249; Availability: End of April.

Davoud

--
usenet *at* davidillig dawt com

It may have some new bells & whistles, but maximum rate is 5 fps, no good
for Jupiter most of the time or even the moon in most areas. Might be good
for DSO use though...

Bill P

"Davoud" wrote in message
...
I just had an e-mail from Meade annoucing two new products: the "Deep
Sky Imager Pro" http://www.meade.com/dsipro/ and the "Wireless
Autostar II for LX200GPS and RCX400 Telescopes"
http://www.meade.com/autostar/wireless_autostar.html.

"The new Deep Sky Imager Pro is the latest innovation from Meade
Engineering. Over two hundred percent more sensitive with four times
the resolution of the color Deep Sky Imager, the Deep Sky Imager Pro is
a high-performance, easy-to-use monochrome CCD that can take you to the
next level in shooting and processing stunning deep sky images of
galaxies, nebulae, star clusters and planets. Aside from the amazing
retail price of only $399, the Deep Sky Imager Pro is the very first
commercially available CCD camera designed to incorporate NASA's
Drizzle Technology (developed originally for the Hubble Space
Telescope) that can correct field rotation (De-rotating the image),
eliminating the need to polar align the telescope, Drizzle can also
increase image resolution and field of view! The Drizzle feature works
with any AutoStar controlled Meade telescope."

$399; RGB filter set $199; Camera and filters together $499.
Availability: End of April.

"A milestone leap in telescope control, now you can operate your
LX200GPS or RCX400 telescope wirelessly from over a hundred feet away!
Just plug in the wireless receiver into the hand box port of the drive
base, turn on the Wireless AutoStar II controller and you'll have
wireless control of every electronic feature of the telescope. The
system uses radio frequency signals instead of infrared, so you won't
have to be in direct line of site for proper operation. Each controller
is on a separate communication code so that any number of astronomers
observing together will not interfere with each other."

$249; Availability: End of April.

Davoud

--
usenet *at* davidillig dawt com

"Bill Paxton" wrote in message
ink.net...
It may have some new bells & whistles, but maximum rate is 5 fps, no good
for Jupiter most of the time or even the moon in most areas. Might be
good
for DSO use though...


Just curious, but why is 5 fps no good for Jupiter ? It's got a minimum
shutter speed of 1/10,000 of a second (or something like that), but why
does the number of fps matter ?



Bill P

"Davoud" wrote in message
...
I just had an e-mail from Meade annoucing two new products: the "Deep
Sky Imager Pro" http://www.meade.com/dsipro/ and the "Wireless
Autostar II for LX200GPS and RCX400 Telescopes"
http://www.meade.com/autostar/wireless_autostar.html.

"The new Deep Sky Imager Pro is the latest innovation from Meade
Engineering. Over two hundred percent more sensitive with four times
the resolution of the color Deep Sky Imager, the Deep Sky Imager Pro is
a high-performance, easy-to-use monochrome CCD that can take you to the
next level in shooting and processing stunning deep sky images of
galaxies, nebulae, star clusters and planets. Aside from the amazing
retail price of only $399, the Deep Sky Imager Pro is the very first
commercially available CCD camera designed to incorporate NASA's
Drizzle Technology (developed originally for the Hubble Space
Telescope) that can correct field rotation (De-rotating the image),
eliminating the need to polar align the telescope, Drizzle can also
increase image resolution and field of view! The Drizzle feature works
with any AutoStar controlled Meade telescope."

$399; RGB filter set $199; Camera and filters together $499.
Availability: End of April.

"A milestone leap in telescope control, now you can operate your
LX200GPS or RCX400 telescope wirelessly from over a hundred feet away!
Just plug in the wireless receiver into the hand box port of the drive
base, turn on the Wireless AutoStar II controller and you'll have
wireless control of every electronic feature of the telescope. The
system uses radio frequency signals instead of infrared, so you won't
have to be in direct line of site for proper operation. Each controller
is on a separate communication code so that any number of astronomers
observing together will not interfere with each other."

$249; Availability: End of April.

Davoud

--
usenet *at* davidillig dawt com

"adm" wrote in message
...

"Bill Paxton" wrote in message
ink.net...
It may have some new bells & whistles, but maximum rate is 5 fps, no
good
for Jupiter most of the time or even the moon in most areas. Might be
good
for DSO use though...


Just curious, but why is 5 fps no good for Jupiter ? It's got a minimum
shutter speed of 1/10,000 of a second (or something like that), but why
does the number of fps matter ?

With Jupiter, fps matters because of both rotational blur factors and
seeing. Jupiter is a very "seeing sensitive" object for most areas of the
world. Exceptions would be locations close to the equator who has used the
5 fps rates successfully on a regular basis. Although the shutter itself
can be set to various settings, like 1/33 or 1/50 sec in Jupiter's case,
because the noise of the CCD system increases, more frames need to be
stacked to overcome noise. At 5 fps, this won't be very many frames per
minute, and you're limited to about 90 seconds with Jupiter before
rotational blur becomes an issue. Unless the CCD used in the Meade was
significantly less noisy than a standard webcam in the RAW mode (which is
doubtful), its 5 fps maximum rate will be a major drawback. The trend now
for planetary imaging seems to be to seek out cameras offering a great fps
with highly sensitive CCDs. Thus, there are some industrial type CCD
cameras capable of up to 60 fps. Such a frame rate is excellent for bright
solar system objects, such as the moon/ sun (when filtered) and *may* be an
advantage for Jupiter. I say "may" because the CCDs used still don't quite
have the sensitivity needed for anything beyond 10 fps on dimmer targets-
you're still better off with a b&w modified webcam in RAW mode.

The problem with the Meade camera is that at 16 bit resolution, you're going
to need a fast laptop to support a 5 fps rate. Forget about a PII or maybe
even a PIII. The 16 bit depth may be a slight advantage, but the total
number of frames you're going to be able to work from will be less than half
of what you'd get at 10 or 15 fps with a webcam. Like I mentioned, if the
CCD noise was much less than a webcam's, that would be the camera's greatest
advantage- and noise and gain are, in fact, the most critical factors. It
will be interesting to see how this new monochrome camera "measures up"
however, for planetary use, I'm not holding my breath.

Bill



Bill P

"Davoud" wrote in message
...
I just had an e-mail from Meade annoucing two new products: the "Deep
Sky Imager Pro" http://www.meade.com/dsipro/ and the "Wireless
Autostar II for LX200GPS and RCX400 Telescopes"
http://www.meade.com/autostar/wireless_autostar.html.

"The new Deep Sky Imager Pro is the latest innovation from Meade
Engineering. Over two hundred percent more sensitive with four times
the resolution of the color Deep Sky Imager, the Deep Sky Imager Pro is
a high-performance, easy-to-use monochrome CCD that can take you to the
next level in shooting and processing stunning deep sky images of
galaxies, nebulae, star clusters and planets. Aside from the amazing
retail price of only $399, the Deep Sky Imager Pro is the very first
commercially available CCD camera designed to incorporate NASA's
Drizzle Technology (developed originally for the Hubble Space
Telescope) that can correct field rotation (De-rotating the image),
eliminating the need to polar align the telescope, Drizzle can also
increase image resolution and field of view! The Drizzle feature works
with any AutoStar controlled Meade telescope."

$399; RGB filter set $199; Camera and filters together $499.
Availability: End of April.

"A milestone leap in telescope control, now you can operate your
LX200GPS or RCX400 telescope wirelessly from over a hundred feet away!
Just plug in the wireless receiver into the hand box port of the drive
base, turn on the Wireless AutoStar II controller and you'll have
wireless control of every electronic feature of the telescope. The
system uses radio frequency signals instead of infrared, so you won't
have to be in direct line of site for proper operation. Each controller
is on a separate communication code so that any number of astronomers
observing together will not interfere with each other."

$249; Availability: End of April.

Davoud

--
usenet *at* davidillig dawt com

On Sat, 09 Apr 2005 07:27:22 GMT, "Bill Paxton"
wrote:

It may have some new bells & whistles, but maximum rate is 5 fps, no good
for Jupiter most of the time or even the moon in most areas. Might be good
for DSO use though...

I shoot all my Jupiter images at 5 fps, with a shutter speed between
1/10 and 1/100 second, depending on conditions. That gives me 1000-2000
frames before planetary rotation becomes a problem- plenty for
processing.

Most webcams can only reliably deliver about 5 uncompressed frames per
second across USB1.

_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com

"Chris L Peterson" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 09 Apr 2005 07:27:22 GMT, "Bill Paxton"
wrote:

It may have some new bells & whistles, but maximum rate is 5 fps, no good
for Jupiter most of the time or even the moon in most areas. Might be
good
for DSO use though...

I shoot all my Jupiter images at 5 fps, with a shutter speed between
1/10 and 1/100 second, depending on conditions. That gives me 1000-2000
frames before planetary rotation becomes a problem- plenty for
processing.

Three to six minutes is simply too long, IMO. I've never had luck with
Jupiter beyond 600 total frames at 5 fps. Now at 10 fps, 1000-1200 frames
are possible and a good amount of leverage to work with. Perhaps you have
better seeing conditions that most, but where I live 5 fps doesn't cut it,
not at 1/33 or 1/50 sec.

Most webcams can only reliably deliver about 5 uncompressed frames per
second across USB1.

At 10 fps, artifact production is minimal and with the sharpness off
modification, the difference in the stack after processing is almost
impossible to tell from 5 fps. Going beyond 10 fps though is another
matter.

Bill

_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com

On Tue, 12 Apr 2005 19:14:38 GMT, "Bill Paxton"
wrote:

Three to six minutes is simply too long, IMO. I've never had luck with
Jupiter beyond 600 total frames at 5 fps. Now at 10 fps, 1000-1200 frames
are possible and a good amount of leverage to work with. Perhaps you have
better seeing conditions that most, but where I live 5 fps doesn't cut it,
not at 1/33 or 1/50 sec.

Just the opposite, you probably have better seeing conditions than I do.
The better your seeing, the shorter the period available for imaging
Jupiter (given a peak smearing rate at the equator of 1" every 257
seconds).

My seeing is sufficiently poor that I can image for 3-5 minutes without
smear exceeding the seeing.

Of course, the other side of that coin is that when seeing is very good,
you need far fewer frames. I usually pick about the best 100-200 frames
out of a thousand or more, and that's with bad seeing.


At 10 fps, artifact production is minimal and with the sharpness off
modification, the difference in the stack after processing is almost
impossible to tell from 5 fps. Going beyond 10 fps though is another
matter.

I guess it depends on the camera, too. I have both a Quickcam 4000 and a
Toucam (they are the same camera internally, but the software is a
little different). With both cameras, there is a visible difference
between uncompressed frames and low compression frames at 10 fps. Again,
this may be a result of my poor seeing, since more compression is
required at 10 fps with my image bouncing around all over the place.

_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com

In article ,
Chris L Peterson wrote:

Just the opposite, you probably have better seeing conditions than I do.
The better your seeing, the shorter the period available for imaging
Jupiter (given a peak smearing rate at the equator of 1" every 257
seconds).

I'd have thought the rotation of Jupiter wasn't _that_ difficult to
model by (OK, paying careful attention to sub-pixels) rotating all the
images back to a reference time; OK, you'll lose a little on the
limbs, and you might need quite careful metrology on the image to get
the region rotated precisely right, but I shouldn't have thought long
exposures of mid-disc regions of Jupiter were entirely impossible.

Am I missing something? I know Jupiter doesn't rotate as a solid body,
but I think that's a second-order effect.

Tom

"Thomas Womack" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Chris L Peterson wrote:

Just the opposite, you probably have better seeing conditions than I do.
The better your seeing, the shorter the period available for imaging
Jupiter (given a peak smearing rate at the equator of 1" every 257
seconds).

I'd have thought the rotation of Jupiter wasn't _that_ difficult to
model by (OK, paying careful attention to sub-pixels) rotating all the
images back to a reference time; OK, you'll lose a little on the
limbs, and you might need quite careful metrology on the image to get
the region rotated precisely right, but I shouldn't have thought long
exposures of mid-disc regions of Jupiter were entirely impossible.

Am I missing something? I know Jupiter doesn't rotate as a solid body,
but I think that's a second-order effect.

You're welcome to try. I've tried lining up different Jupiter stacks taken
over a 10 minute period. The most I have been able to get away with,
without significant rotational blur, is approximately 2 minutes. Jupiter
seems to "smear" more easily than any other solar system object I image.
Whereas with the moon or even Saturn, where picking out good frames over
long time period really doesn't matter, Jupiter is clearly different.

Chris is saying otherwise, which I don't quite follow, but perhaps because
of his seeing, he already has significant blur to begin with.

Bill


Tom

On 13 Apr 2005 11:07:54 +0100 (BST), Thomas Womack
wrote:

I'd have thought the rotation of Jupiter wasn't _that_ difficult to
model by (OK, paying careful attention to sub-pixels) rotating all the
images back to a reference time; OK, you'll lose a little on the
limbs, and you might need quite careful metrology on the image to get
the region rotated precisely right, but I shouldn't have thought long
exposures of mid-disc regions of Jupiter were entirely impossible.

Am I missing something? I know Jupiter doesn't rotate as a solid body,
but I think that's a second-order effect.

What you are proposing isn't simple. Since the smear is produced by
rotation, not linear movement, you would need to correct the position of
each pixel based on its distance from the center of the Jupiter image.
And as you note, you would end up with some odd artifacts, especially
around the limb. This is easy to picture by taking an extreme case of a
long exposure. If a feature like the GRS rotates a quarter of the way
around the disk, just where will it be placed in the final
reconstruction?

Still, for short exposures- a few minutes- you could probably apply a
geometrical transform that would give slightly improved resolution of
features.

_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com