Toucam Pro on Order

I've decided to have a look at imaging this winter, I've ordered a
Toucam Pro II and a webcam/telescope adapter for my ETX 90, both
should be here by the weekend.

I have a CD that came with my Meade Autostar that contains the
Autostar software, can I use this with the Toucam or does it only work
with the Meade LPI unit?

Also can someone recommend a web site or two to get me started with
set-up and what software I'll need to stack the images etc.

Any help or pointers will be gratefully received, thanks.
--
Regards

Nick

"Nick Mason" wrote in message
...
I've decided to have a look at imaging this winter, I've ordered a Toucam
Pro II and a webcam/telescope adapter for my ETX 90, both should be here
by the weekend.

I have a CD that came with my Meade Autostar that contains the Autostar
software, can I use this with the Toucam or does it only work with the
Meade LPI unit?

Also can someone recommend a web site or two to get me started with set-up
and what software I'll need to stack the images etc.

Any help or pointers will be gratefully received, thanks.
--
Regards

Nick

The meade autostar software consists of a few modules. The modules including
the planetarium and remote telescope will still work with the ETX. The
toucam will require additional software for stacking. I'm no expert on the
toucam and associated software. Perhaps others here should be able to
advise.

Regards


Chris

On Tue, 20 Sep 2005 17:02:25 GMT, Nick Mason
wrote:

I've decided to have a look at imaging this winter, I've ordered a
Toucam Pro II and a webcam/telescope adapter for my ETX 90, both
should be here by the weekend.

I have a CD that came with my Meade Autostar that contains the
Autostar software, can I use this with the Toucam or does it only work
with the Meade LPI unit?

Also can someone recommend a web site or two to get me started with
set-up and what software I'll need to stack the images etc.

Any help or pointers will be gratefully received, thanks.

Hi Nick,

Toucam will come with it's own driver and interface software. I've got
the Toucam Pro (the forerunner to the Pro II). The software for this
is adequate but poory designed in as much as the capture file name is
not auto-advanced. If I recall, it was alll too easy to do a promising
capture and then overwrite it with the next one!

I moved onto the freeware version of K3CCDTools in the end. Version 2
isn't free anymore but I believe version 1 is (see
http://www.pk3.org/Astro/).

This program is much better as it *does* auto advance filenames for
you.

Once you've captured your AVI files using the above software, you'll
need something to stack them with. Registax is the program you want
for this (http://registax.astronomy.net/). This is free too :-)

The best thing to practice on is the Moon without doubt. It's bright,
easy to locate and provides a lot of interesting detail.

Get your kit together and then ask more questions if you're stuck.

--
Pete
http://www.digitalsky.org.uk

Pete Lawrence wrote:
On Tue, 20 Sep 2005 17:02:25 GMT, Nick Mason
wrote:


I've decided to have a look at imaging this winter, I've ordered a
Toucam Pro II and a webcam/telescope adapter for my ETX 90, both
should be here by the weekend.

I have a CD that came with my Meade Autostar that contains the
Autostar software, can I use this with the Toucam or does it only work
with the Meade LPI unit?

Also can someone recommend a web site or two to get me started with
set-up and what software I'll need to stack the images etc.

Any help or pointers will be gratefully received, thanks.


Hi Nick,

Toucam will come with it's own driver and interface software. I've got
the Toucam Pro (the forerunner to the Pro II). The software for this
is adequate but poory designed in as much as the capture file name is
not auto-advanced. If I recall, it was alll too easy to do a promising
capture and then overwrite it with the next one!

I moved onto the freeware version of K3CCDTools in the end. Version 2
isn't free anymore but I believe version 1 is (see
http://www.pk3.org/Astro/).

This program is much better as it *does* auto advance filenames for
you.

Once you've captured your AVI files using the above software, you'll
need something to stack them with. Registax is the program you want
for this (http://registax.astronomy.net/). This is free too :-)

The best thing to practice on is the Moon without doubt. It's bright,
easy to locate and provides a lot of interesting detail.

Get your kit together and then ask more questions if you're stuck.


Pete,
thank you for the prompt response! Registax, that's the name I'd
heard and couldn't remember. I'll look at the ccd tools website later
this evening, If version 1 is still free I'll try it and then pay for
the upgrade to the later version if I need to.

As you suggest I'll get my kit together and have a go at the moon, it
makes sense for all the reasons you mention. :O)

It's a pity I didn't have my kit last week when we had that beautiful
harvest moon you photographed so well.

--
Regards

Nick

On Tue, 20 Sep 2005 17:49:18 GMT, Nick Mason
wrote:

Pete,
thank you for the prompt response! Registax, that's the name I'd
heard and couldn't remember. I'll look at the ccd tools website later
this evening, If version 1 is still free I'll try it and then pay for
the upgrade to the later version if I need to.

As you suggest I'll get my kit together and have a go at the moon, it
makes sense for all the reasons you mention. :O)

It's a pity I didn't have my kit last week when we had that beautiful
harvest moon you photographed so well.

Ah - but the full Moon is full of promise but a bit dull when imaged -
unless you enlist the help of some passing clouds that is ;-)

Much more fun is to be had when the terminator is crossing the face.
Lots of high contrast shadowplay and oblique lighting to play with.
Unfortunately for you, this will mean an early morning over the next
couple of weeks.

Mars is another interesting target at the moment. However, if you're
starting out it's best to learn with a small focal length (which will
mean that the image scale will also be small). Pushing the optical
amplification high is more demanding on your equipment, skills and
patience!
--
Pete
http://www.digitalsky.org.uk

"Pete Lawrence" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 20 Sep 2005 17:49:18 GMT, Nick Mason
wrote:

Pete,
thank you for the prompt response! Registax, that's the name I'd
heard and couldn't remember. I'll look at the ccd tools website later
this evening, If version 1 is still free I'll try it and then pay for
the upgrade to the later version if I need to.

As you suggest I'll get my kit together and have a go at the moon, it
makes sense for all the reasons you mention. :O)

It's a pity I didn't have my kit last week when we had that beautiful
harvest moon you photographed so well.

Ah - but the full Moon is full of promise but a bit dull when imaged -
unless you enlist the help of some passing clouds that is ;-)

Much more fun is to be had when the terminator is crossing the face.
Lots of high contrast shadowplay and oblique lighting to play with.
Unfortunately for you, this will mean an early morning over the next
couple of weeks.

Mars is another interesting target at the moment. However, if you're
starting out it's best to learn with a small focal length (which will
mean that the image scale will also be small). Pushing the optical
amplification high is more demanding on your equipment, skills and
patience!
--
Pete
http://www.digitalsky.org.uk

Tell me about it, my best Mars so far is so blurred that it can be
officially classed as awful :-)

I've got a Tucam Pro II, and in a nutshell it's almost identical to the
Tucam Pro. The VRecord software is the same and has the same problems then
you mentioned. However, it is good enough to use to use for a while whilst
getting used to the kit. Just make sure that you change the filename for
each recording. (Like Pete Said)

Once you get used to using the camera, K3CCDTools is alot better apart from
the Auto-advanced file name there's also a brightness meter which can when
recording. There's alot more features on this program, which may or may
not be useful to you. I finally bought my licence this year when I tried
the Drift Explorer for autoguiding and found almost too easy to use.

Regards

Colin Dawson
www.cjdawson.com

Colin Dawson said:

"Pete Lawrence" wrote in message

.. .


On Tue, 20 Sep 2005 17:49:18 GMT, Nick Mason
wrote:

Pete,
thank you for the prompt response! Registax, that's the name I'd
heard and couldn't remember. I'll look at the ccd tools website later
this evening, If version 1 is still free I'll try it and then pay for
the upgrade to the later version if I need to.

As you suggest I'll get my kit together and have a go at the moon, it
makes sense for all the reasons you mention. :O)

It's a pity I didn't have my kit last week when we had that beautiful
harvest moon you photographed so well.





[snip]


Once you get used to using the camera, K3CCDTools is alot better apart from
the Auto-advanced file name there's also a brightness meter which can when
recording. There's alot more features on this program, which may or may
not be useful to you. I finally bought my licence this year when I tried
the Drift Explorer for autoguiding and found almost too easy to use.

I have experimented with Registax (off-line, obviously), AstroView
(from COAIA) and Colin Brownes' (what happened to him?) Vega and found
them all to have their strengths and weaknesses. I haven't tried
k3ccdtools.

Has anyone done a comparison of these and/or other free or cheap Webcam
and stacking tools?

My current preference is AstroView for running the camera and Registax
for further processing but I find that the two don't really go well
together - for example, AstroView sums and doesn't produce an averaged
dark file whereas Registax appears not to have a facility to weight the
dark file, i.e. it assumes that the dark file has been averaged
already.. Sometimes, I would like to apply the dark file after
gathering the data rather than while using the telescope. Also,
AstroView is very much oriented towards using FITS files whereas
Registax seems more capable for bitmaps.