ASTROPHOTOGRAPHY WITH MEADE LUNAR PLANETARY IMAGER Last updated: 27 December 2004

This page documents the Meade Lunar Planetary Imager comments, tips, and photos. Contributions welcome. I have posted a review of using the Autostar Suite and LPI on the Macintosh. In order to showcase the LPI you may occasionally see images taken with other telescopes on this page.

Subject:	LPI Images of Saturn, Venus & Moon
Sent:	Sunday, December 26, 2004 19:17:57
From:	chockyfingers@dsl.pipex.com (chockyfingers@dsl.pipex.com)
I was given my ETX 105 a couple of months ago, but due to the awful
weather in the UK I've only had a afew nights practice to get everything
up and running. Here are my first attempts at astrophotography. All
thats been used are the ETX 105, the Meade LPI, a laptop, and touched up
a bit in PaintShopPro.





Venus


Saturn


The pictures are just one image, none have been stacked, I haven't worked that 
all out yet :)

Thanks 
-Alex Field-

Subject:	First time astro photos
Sent:	Saturday, December 25, 2004 13:49:04
From:	Martin Richards (MRichards@pivotal.com)
Well, having done lots of research on the web, including a lot of
browsing of your site, Santa bought me and my two daughters an ETX-105
and clear skies for Christmas day...

Attached is our first go with the bundled LPI and software, processed in
registax V3 on full autopilot.  It's not very big, but it's our first
go, and it managed to elicit a cry of "Cool!" from my 8 year old when
she saw the results, so I'm pleased with it!





We're located right on the northern edge of London, UK, so except to the
north, the skies are a bit orange usually.  Tonight of course they were
all a bit washed out thanks to the full moon, but I've had a great
evening out there :-)

Cheers,

Martin

Martin Richards 
Technical Manager 
Pivotal Corporation 

Subject:	Blurred images of Saturn
Sent:	Tuesday, December 21, 2004 00:44:11
From:	CN (chhrisnderby@hotmail.com)
Why is there no detail on on my Saturn Images? This was taken with an
ETX-105, LPI and 2x Barlow and as you can see there is little or no
detail visible, not even the Cassini division on the rings. Is the LPI
setting the wrong exposure to create stackable images? Any help would be
gratefully received.





Chris Newsome
Derby, UK

Subject:	Lunar LPI Images
Sent:	Tuesday, December 21, 2004 00:40:23
From:	CN (chhrisnderby@hotmail.com)
I thought that you may like the attached lunar images taken over the
past couple of nights. I used my ETX-105 for two of them but wanted to
compare the LPI on the ETX with my Celestron C6-N as well and the result
is included. Hope you don't mind the odd Celestron picture creeping onto
a Meade site!!!!!!!
 






Chris Newsome
(Derby, UK)

Subject: LPI images Sun Jupiter Moon venus
From:   phippsr@blueyonder.co.uk
Date: December 2, 2004 12:48:19 PST
I bought an ETX 125 last year and shortely after an LPI imager.  I am
new to astonomy but was able to get this pcutires quite easily and
resonalbe satisifed with my efforts.  Hope you like them. regards.










Richard Phipps

Subject: LPI USB Cable length
From: "Philip Maud" (p.maud@angletechnology.com)
Date: December 2, 2004 05:08:45 PST
What is the maximum USB cable length that the LPI/Autostar Suite will
tolerate? Will the use of active or repeater USB cables make any
difference to the maximum length?

Thanks and regards

Philip Maud

Subject:	How do you get good LPI exposures of stars?
Sent:	Tuesday, November 23, 2004 09:46:42
From:	Chris Newsome (chrisnewsome@derbyuk99.freeserve.co.uk)
Having owned an ETX-105  for a couple of months (together with my
Celestron C6-N) and been totally frustrated with the English weather
this year, I have not been able to use it as much as I would have liked.
As a result, I have spent evenings on the computer going through your
fantastic site  I recently took my first picture with my new LPI
(attached). 




However, on your site I found a fantastic picture of the
Pleiades taken by Graham, John L (Graham@udri.udayton.edu). What
exposure settings were used with the software to get such sharp star
images?
 
Regards
 
Chris Newsome
 (Derby, UK)

Subject:	lpi cable
Sent:	Tuesday, November 16, 2004 11:10:07
From:	gary taylor (gary@taylorg130.fsnet.co.uk)
Just received ETX90 with LPI and autostar, my question is, are all three
cables used and if so is it possible to extend them as I am led to
believe that USB cables can not be greater than 3m long and my PC is
over 15m from my viewing site.

P.S. your site has been of immense help.

Gary

Subject:	Meade LPI: Faint Asteroids and Saturn
Sent:	Tuesday, November 16, 2004 06:06:09
From:	Graham, John L (Graham@udri.udayton.edu)
Over the past weekend I had a chance to test the Meade LPI imaging a
really faint asteroid. After taking pictures of 4 Vesta and 9 Metis I
swung over to a little world called 135 Hertha shining faintly at
magnitude 11.4. This would be quite a challenge visually with a small
telescope but the Meade LPI had no problems with it. The attached
composite image was taken with the LPI on my 4.5" f/4 Newtonian on my
Meade DS-2130 mount. The source images were an average of 10 8-sec
exposures with a histogram of 0-64 and dark-subtracted.





I also obtained a new image of Saturn in the wee hours of Saturday
morning. Comparing this with an image I obtained in September shows a
small increase in the size of Saturn as we swing around the Sun and get
closer to opposition. I'll probably add more pictures to this series as
we approach, then withdraw from Saturn over the winter and into next
spring. These images were taken with the LPI mounted on my Meade DS-2130
with a 2x Barlow.





-John

Subject:	Saturn pics with Lpi
Sent:	Thursday, November 11, 2004 08:57:24
From:	Co1dSp1d3R@aol.com (Co1dSp1d3R@aol.com)
Here is a picture of saturn i took with my etx90 and lpi camera. 45
frames stacked in registax no barlow used. not bad considering this was
the first time i had used this scope and lpi on anything other than the
moon.

Subject:	Meade LPI: Asteroids
Sent:	Thursday, November 11, 2004 07:58:18
From:	Graham, John L (Graham@udri.udayton.edu)
As I expected, photographing asteroids is a relatively simple task with
the Meade LPI. I was hoping to image 4 Vesta as my first target, but by
the time I was set up it was in the trees. My second choice was a little
8.9 magnitude rock called 27 Euterpe. I used a 4.5" f/4 on a Meade
DS-2130 mount. After setting up with a two-star alignment and focusing
the telescope all further slewing and guiding was done remotely using
the Astonomer's Control Panel and the Meade #506 cable set. It took only
a few minutes to locate the asteroid and start acquiring images. I
averaged 10 images with dark-subtraction and the histogram set from 0 to
64. The example attached is a composite of two images taken at 9:58 and
10:34 eastern time on the evening of November 9th. I would have taken
more, but it was so cold outside the batteries in the mount faded. I
hope to modify the mount with an external power supply for cold weather
operation. Being able to control the telescope and take images from the
relative comfort of my garage is the cat's meow.





Have fun!

-John

Subject:	Meade LPI: Deepsky
Sent:	Monday, November 8, 2004 13:24:00
From:	Graham, John L (Graham@udri.udayton.edu)
I was tinkering with my LPI over the weekend to see how faint I could go
using my 4.5" f/4 Newtonian guided using my DS-2130's mount. In addition
to that I was controlling the telescope using the Astronomer's Control
Panel that came with the Meade #506 computer interface. Now that's the
way to use the LPI! The attached image of the Pleiades is a composite of
16 LPI images while the Double Cluster required 6. Each source image was
an average of eight, 8-second exposures. It looks like the limiting
magnitude is right at 12th, which is slightly better than looking
through my telescope visually. This bodes well for using the LPI to
image asteroids.






Have a good evening,

- John

Subject:	ETX-105 on mac
Sent:	Sunday, November 7, 2004 12:43:22
From:	Wayne Taylor (uskitebum@yahoo.com)
I was wondering if you could tell me if there is a driver available for
Mac X to run the LPI camera on my ETX-105?
Thanks.

Subject:	Moon picture for gallery
Sent:	Thursday, October 28, 2004 10:20:10
From:	Simon Thomas (small-fish@tiscali.co.uk)
Please find attached picture of the Moon taken on 26/10/2004, from
Birmingham, UK.  Taken with an ETX-105 and Meade LPI.  This is my first
attempt at imaging with the LPI, and I am quite impressed with the
results.
 




Kind Regards.
 
Simon

Subject:	Moon pics
Sent:	Wednesday, October 20, 2004 09:18:48
From:	Co1dSp1d3R@aol.com (Co1dSp1d3R@aol.com)
These are the first astro pics i have taken and was fairly chuffed with
the result. Both are a single frame (as you know still awaiting my
replacement autostar so have no tracking) only adjusments were auto
levelling and contrast

etx-90 and Lpi!

Subject:	At last ! M57 with LPI
Sent:	Thursday, October 7, 2004 05:13:06
From:	Mr. Tom (MrTomsMail@gmx.net)
at last I could capture M57 with my C9 and the LPI. Due to my new 1,25"
Focalreducer 0.47 screwed into the LPI I could use the 8.4m bright star on
the right of the picture for tracking. On screen only stars up to 10m were
nearly visible while taking the pictures, no sign of M57. 30 frames of each
16 sec were added with darkframe subtraction, the polar alignment was only
rough, slight wind and fine clouds, 
M 57 over a roof top, all on my balcony in light and smog polluted Aachen
city.Brightness and contrast were pushed to the limit, color remained
untouched, M57 showed up!





Yes, that payed the 40 Euros for the focal reducer (from www.astrocom.de).

Cheers,
Tom
Aachen & Dortmund, Germany

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