Category Archives: Astronomy

Time for a new white light solar filter

Posted on August 13, 2014 by james

I’ve had a white light solar filter made from Baader ND5.0 film (two, in fact) for several years and one of them was starting to look rather tatty so I decided it was time to make another.  Baader’s instructions suggest … Continue reading →

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Collecting meteorites from rainwater

Posted on August 13, 2014 by james

Allegedly it is possible to collect tiny fragments of meteorites from rainwater.  The story goes that they can drift in the atmosphere until they get caught in the rain and end up falling to the ground.  By trapping the flow … Continue reading →

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QHY5 support in oacapture

Posted on August 13, 2014 by james

Support for the QHY cameras is somewhat tricky.  There are all sorts of different versions of firmware floating about, not to mention various different versions of the open source interface library.  Even more awkwardly, whilst many other manufacturers have perhaps … Continue reading →

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First Light for Linux imaging application

Posted on November 27, 2013 by james

It’s been a stupendous time coming thanks to the grim weather we’ve had over the last three months, but then if the weather hadn’t been grim I might not have got so far 😀 However, two nights ago I went … Continue reading →

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Linux support for Imaging Source USB CCD astronomy cameras

Posted on November 13, 2013 by james

I’ve been on something of a mystery tour over the last few days trying to work out exactly what is required to get the Imaging Source USB CCD astronomy cameras working on Linux. What information I’ve been able to find … Continue reading →

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Colour histogram and reticle for Linux capture app

Posted on October 18, 2013 by james

Progress, progress… Here’s my reticle and the colour version of the histogram. I may add some options for changing the style of the reticle and splitting the histogram into three, but those are for later. I also killed a few … Continue reading →

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Mono histogram for capture application

Posted on October 17, 2013 by james

I have the histogram working for mono cameras now. Colour is more work, but that will follow shortly. It doesn’t look too exciting mind.

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ASI120MM capture support

Posted on October 16, 2013 by james

Here’s capture support working in my new application for the ASI120MM, together with binning. I’m really not sure what use binning is for high frame rate image capture, but it works anyhow.

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Troubles with the ASI120MC

Posted on October 16, 2013 by james

I started getting some problems with data from the ASI120MC in my capture application, with the image “tearing” or undebayered data appearing in what ought to be debayered frames as in these two examples: It turns out that the problem … Continue reading →

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ASI120MC capture support

Posted on October 15, 2013 by james

I’m now able to get an image from my ASI120MC: The colour is all wrong. It turns out that whilst the header file gives the image format define as “RGB24”, it’s actually BGR24. I can probably write them to an … Continue reading →

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