Timelapse of the Milky Way, Mars, Pleiades, Orion Complex, Sirius, etc from Oct 6th 2018

Heya,

I made an all-weather box that can sit out at my observatory and do captures for hours safely in the weather using a simple USB camera and a laptop.

Oct 6th was close enough to the new moon (no moon in the sky) that I could get a full night of clear sky and no bright objects so that I could get 9 hours of sky time to animate. I live in a green zone, which is a pretty dark sky zone with minimal light pollution so I can get a lot more out of the exposures without having to do any fancy processing. I captured a frame every 60 seconds for 9.25 hours and the playback is at 15 FPS reducing it to 37 seconds. It takes you from dusk to dawn with the core of the galaxy, Mars, several globs & clusters, Pleiades, Orion Complex, Sirius, etc.

(Click the link to go to my Flickr to playback the AVI, it's 37 seconds):

https://flic.kr/p/2bSy​hmF

Setup:

DIY weather box with an ZWO ASI224MC camera and 2.1mm wide angle lens

Very cool, Martin!

I'm a little confused, though, about your camera/lens attachment. Where do you find a 2.1mm lens, and how do you attach it to the camera as well as focus?

Heya,

The ASI224MC has a standard threading (M42) for CCTV and standard optical systems, telescope systems, etc. They come with wide angle lenses like this and you can find them for sale. The 2.1mm lens came with this particular camera. But you can find them, CCTV lenses with M42 threading for pretty cheap. It focuses by turning the barrel while viewing live via a laptop or other device (it connects over USB). It's super easy since it's ultrawide (150 degree) angle and is focused to infinity. Think of it like a fancy CMOS web cam with lenses. I focused it once and leave it there (it's at infinity at this wide of an angle).

Very best,

Ah, that makes sense. I didn't realize the they came with a lens.

I picked up a Neximage Burst a few years ago. It's been somewhat disappointing.

The ASI224MC looks like a decent planetary camera, based on some images I've seen, and the 2.1 lens is a nice bonus.

Thanks!

I just want to put up a tent and hang out in your backyard for a year or two

Awesome!

This is cool and looks very unique! Congrats. How do you keep it from the affects of temperature changes such as lens fogging up or the dome fogging up. How do you keep it from overheating?

It has a heat strip inside the box to keep it warm. Warm air radiates out of it, to ambient, so it's passively cooled. It's always warmer than ambient, therefore, no dew can form by design.

Very best,

MalVeauX wrote in post #18727504
It has a heat strip inside the box to keep it warm. Warm air radiates out of it, to ambient, so it's passively cooled. It's always warmer than ambient, therefore, no dew can form by design.

Very best,

Thanks! Has NASA tapped you yet for their deepspace projects..I mean who needs Hubble when we have MalVeauX!

The funny thing about Hubble and other telescopes, is that there's more data than people can even comb through, so really it's more significant with big data' if you can code and write software to analyze large blobs of data to result in patterns, or meaning basically. It's weird. I just like to see stuff and take pictures more.

Very best,