Weasner's Meade LPI Astrophotography Page

ASTROPHOTOGRAPHY WITH MEADE LUNAR PLANETARY IMAGER

Last updated: 10 June 2005

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:	Campo, resocion y tamao del chip de LPI de Meade
Sent:	Wednesday, June 8, 2005 04:20:56
From:	Astroreus (astroreus@yahoo.es)
Por fin he podido calcular el campo y la resolucin del LPI de Meade para
mi telescopio ETX90.

Estuve buscando por la red a ver si alguien saba el tamao del chip de la
cmara y la verdad es que no hubo manera de encontrarlo, as que lo pongo
aqu para quie lo quiera saber.

	 	Tamao de la imagen: Diagonal 6.5mm, 5,18mm x 3,90mm
	 	Pixels efectivos: 644(H) x 484(V) ~310K pixels
	 	Nmero total de pixels: 648(H) x 488(V) ~320K pixels
	 	Tamao del pixel: 8.0m(H) x 8.0m(V)

Con estos datos me salen los siguientes resultados:
	 	Tamao del chip (Chip size): 3,9 mm x 5,2 mm
	 	Resolucin de la imagen con el etx 90: 1,32 seg/pixel
	 	Campo de la cmara:  10,60 min x 14,1 min (este es el valor que
	 	teneis que introducir en el "Cartes du ciel" para ver el campo
	 	de la camara con el telescopio)

Todo esto est calculado con el CCD CALCULATOR de Ron Wodaski. Lo podeis
descargar aqu.

http://www.multimediamadness.net/newastro/downloads/ccdcalc/ccdcalcbasic.exe

Translation:

Finally I have been able to calculate the field and the resolution of
the LPI of Meade for my telescope ETX90.

I was looking for by the network to see if somebody knew the size of
the chip of the camera and the truth is that there was no way to find
it, so I put it here for quie wants it to know.

	Size of the image: Diagonal 6.5mm, 5,18mm effective xs 3,90mm
	Pixels: 644(H) x 484(V) ~310K pixels total 
	Number of pixels: 648(H) So large x
	488(V) ~320K pixels of the pixel: 8.0m(H) xs 8.0m(V) 
	
With these data leave the following results to me:

	Size of the chip (Chip size): 3.9 mm x 5.2 mm 
	Resolution of the image with etx 90: 1,32 seg/pixel 
	Field of the camera: 10,60 min x 14.1 min (this it is the value that
	teneis that to introduce in the "Cartes du ciel" to see the field of
	camara with the telescope) All this is calculated with CCD
	CALCULATOR of Rum Wodaski. Podeis to unload here.

http://www.multimediamadness.net/newastro/downloads/ccdcalc/ccdcalcbasic.exe

Subject:	Some Images from May 17, 2005
Sent:	Wednesday, May 18, 2005 11:58:37
From:	Phillips, Edward (Edward.B.Phillips@msfc.nasa.gov)
Here are some images I took on May 17, 2005 using my Supercharged
ETX-125 with LPI.

The moon images shows some landing site of the Surveyor, Ranger, and
Luna robitic probes.

The Jupiter images show the moons Io and Ganymede using with and without
X2 Barlow.

Hope your web site read enjoy them.

Edward B. Phillips
NASA Marshall Space Flight Center
Huntsville, AL
E-mail: edward.phillips@msfc.nasa.gov

Subject:	LPI Picture
Sent:	Sunday, May 8, 2005 22:47:27
From:	User721401@aol.com (User721401@aol.com)
Well I think I sort of got the hang of new 125 PE telescope...But for
some reason this is what I get with the LPI...any suggestions???

By the way, that is Jupiter?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?  I think it took about 80
pictures and this is what it came up with.

Thanks

Mike here: Well, focus doesn't look too good. Either that or the seeing was lousy. Either will mess up the stacking. As to the color, odd.

Subject:	Jupiter photo using ETX125+LPI
Sent:	Monday, May 2, 2005 13:19:27
From:	John Blakely (blakelyj@sol.dnet.co.uk)
Many thanks for a great web site. 

Here is my first astro-photo attempt using recently aquired ETX-125 UHC
+ LPI. I have not processed the image other than to let the LPI software
stack 12 images. I set the scope up about 14m from my dining room window
where my desktop PC lives. To achieve USB comms with the LPI over this
distance I invested in a cheap USB mains powered hub and made up a
couple of USB cables each 7m long. The hub sits halfway between the
camera and the computer and acts like a USB extender which seems to work
OK over this distance. Max recommended cable length for USB appears to
be 5m so I pushed my luck a bit using 7m cables. The trickiest part of
the process was achieving good LPI focus. I turned the PC monitor to the
window and tried to tweak focus from the scope while peering at the
monitor through a pair of binoculars. This proved useless! My son came
to the rescue by standing at the window and relaying instructions. Maybe
I need to invest in a laptop...
 
Best Regards,
John Blakely
near Lisburn
Northern Ireland

Subject: 	First pics Jupiter and Saturn	
From: 	  jan.kolsto@online.no
Date: 	May 1, 2005 04:43:13 PDT
These were my first astropics. Any suggestions how to improve the pics?






Thanks for keeping up the brilliant page!
Jan
Norway

Mike here: Using the LPI (or any imager) takes practice and patience. It also takes good seeing and good focus. It also takes letting the telescope reach thermal equilibrium (at least 90 minutes for best results with an ETX-90). That said, those are pretty good images for first ones. The Saturn one looks like some motion occurred. Were these single frame shots or stacks of multiple images?

And:

They were "stacks" about 50 pics taken outside our house.There is
sunshine rather late in Norway these days so I guess "the astronomy 
season "is fading out.Thanks a lot for responding.Thanks!

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