Pictures made with a Webcam

Some new pictures from our sun and moon and also some older pictures I've found in my archive of the solar eclipse of 11 aug 1999.

Sun spots : 18-09-04

The original pictures, or just one of them in case I've used several to stack.

Same pictures after some processing.

Impressive what you can do....

isn't it !

These pictures were made without a barlow.

Showing the same sunspot areas as in the previous pictures.

The right one is with extreme contrast enhancement, just to show you the granules better. Also watch the edge darkening of the sun.

Just by adjusting the contrast you can get

another impression or result.

Zoom in to see umbra details

I'm still proud about these results.

Sure, I think now the pictures are getting better, but these results were taken with minimal equipment.

Solar eclipse of 11 aug 1999 watched by Jos and me somewhere

near the boarder of France/Germany (total sun eclips)

As you can see : lots of clouds !

On the "moment supreme" we could't even see the sun.

But believe me, it is a strange experience when in gets very dark in the middle of the day.

and not only because of the dark clouds !!!

An animation of the transit of Venus.

Still some things to improve, but I think the results are getting better and better.

I've used Astrostack2 :unsharp mask strenght 3; deconvolution 1(van Cittert), and Paint shop pro2.

The Venus transit was a great experience. WOW, look at how big it is ( compare it with Mercuri , as seen further down this page).

Unfortunately I wasn't able to make pictures when the "eclips" started due to some trees and also the seeing wasn't very good during the transit.

I've made almost 350 pictures. Here are just a few of them. The sun was very quit, only some very small sunspots were present (see picture 2) and a faculae area ( as can be seen in picture 3)

Here is a animation of the movement of this planet during the last 30 minutes of it's transit . It may take some time to download ( 309 kb).

This animation is made from the original pictures, so no unsharp mask, deconvolution, sharpening or stacking of several pictures was used !

Animation !!

Local time: 08:58:55

11:00:11

12:25:15

12:54:25

13:04:55

13:22:23 (almos last contact)

A big sunspot on 28-05-04

Click on the picture to get bigger size.

Detail of the left picture.

First trials making pictures of Jupiter on 28-05-04! (2 X barlowlens)

I was very surpriced about the size on the computer monitor...

Sun

Finaly I've bought a new webcam. It is a TOUcam Pro2. This one uses a real CCD and not a CMOS, so more sensitive and less noice can be expected.

The next 5 pictures show the results of my first attempt on making pictures with this cam.

Also I want to show what is possible with some software like Paint shop pro, astrostack and AVI2BMP....

Click on the small pictures below to get a bigger view.

Pictures were made on 28 march 2004.

			A big improvement compared with the previous pictures made with the "FUN" version, isn't it ? I think the TOUcam Pro2 is worth the € 79,- I spent on it.
Picture 1 This is the original picture, grabbed with AVI out of a video made with the webcam. Also a 2X barlow was used and the same Solar filter from Baader.	Picture 2 This is the original after using "mean"and "contrast" in Astrostack	Picture 3 Same as before, but now with "paint shop pro" some coloring was used and the contrast was further enhanced.

Picture 4 Same area of the sun as above, but without the 2X barlow	Picture 5 Another interesting area. Two small sunspots and some lighter areas.

-------

TOUcam FUN with 2X barlow. Solar filter from Baader. Picture made on 15 nov 2003.

Lot of dirt visible. Cleaning of CCD is needed !

MOON

The webcam is a Philips TOUcam FUN, and I've used a 2X barlow ( picture 1 = without barlow). No filter was used.

Pictures were taken on 11 nov 2003.

I was very supriced by the quality, sure there are a lot of things than can be improved, but for the first results I think they are pretty good. You'll find some small black spots on these picture, it is some dirt on the CCD, I've to clean it.

In fact this is the second attempt on making pictures with this webcam. During the transit of Mercury, earlier this year, I tried to make pictures, but in my opinion the results weren't that good. Maybe I can polish them up with ASTROSTACK and then show them on my homepage , who knows ?

The pictures were modified with ASTROSTACK2, each time only one picture is used and the following calculations were made : MEAN -UNSHARP MASK - DECONVOLUTION.

Then they were made "smaller" with MACROMEDIA FIREWORKS MX.

By the way: the Crayford focuser I've made works great !

Mercuri transit.

These are a few pictures I've made during the Mercuri transit on 7-5-2003.

The filter I used was a Baader solar foil, no barlow lens (simply, because I didn't have one at that time) and a TOUcam Fun.

The time mentioned in the pictures is Local time. (Landgraaf - Netherlands).

Maybe the quality isn't that good, but these were my first trial on making pictures with a simple webcam, but they do show the movement of our smallest inner planet.

11.52

12.01

12.15

12.17

12.18

12.21