I do not own a Meade telescope so I do not use the features within the Meade software to drive my telescope.

Before you go any futher, if you have not downloaded the latest updates from Meade I would suggest you do so now as this newer version called Envisage V4.1 now has the Drizzle feature for the DSI Colour and the LPI. 

	This is the capture software that comes with the original Meade software.   I use this software to capture the night sky as it has darker background when you set a your favourite sky map program to night vision mode.
	There is one big problem with this new software Envisage,  it leaves the screen bright grey no matter how you set up the screen for the nights capture. For the sharp eyed you may have noticed some dark dots on the two images.  These are dust motes that I will have to remove before the next clear night  ;-)

Back in june I got my DSI and on the first clear night I was out imaging with my new camera.

I did not do too bad for the first night out but since then I have learnt a few things, so here I have documented them for 2 reasons.

1) So that I have a record of what I have done and how I did it.

2) Put it up on the web just incase its of any help to someone else.


When I got my camera I assumed it was like my friends camera (Starlight Express) and I tried to follow what I had seen him do.   This is where I made my mistake because I did not read the small pdf files on the CD. 

I wonder how many reading this will have done something very similar and not looked at the CD ?

I follow what I normally do when setting up the telescope with the webcam to capture the planets up to where I plug in the webcam.  Instead of plugging in the webcam I start the laptop and plug in the DSI and leave it for 15 minutes or so to reach operating temperature.


Depending on what object I am going to image during that night will depend on what I use.

If capturing a large object like M31 (my home page for instance) in Andromeda then I would use a 135mm lens and a X2 teleconverter which just fits nicely on screen.

If capturing say a globular cluster which is too large to fit on screen when the DSI is attached to the telscope then I would use a .5 focal reducer (bought from SCS Astros in the UK) effectively doubling the field of view.

On the other hand if capturing planetary nebula that are quite small then I would just use the telescope with the DSI attached.

Capturing the planets is a little different because they are always so small, so I would use a Barlow lens.  I have used X2 and X4 Barlow lens.  These can be seen on my Mars and Jupiter pages.

Planetary imaging
	This image shows a typical screen shot during the capture of Mars.  I have learnt that if you have the image too bright when stacking the images the planets detail are lost as the image tends to get over bright.  So I darken the image so that I can just see the detail on the planet.
Single .bmp frame of Mars from 31st Oct 05	Here is how I did it. I told the software to use the following:- Kernel Filters = None Apply after = 0 frames Image process = Planet Evaluation count =  1 Min Quality = 0 Combine = unticked Save as bmp, save every frame. Colour = sharp and auto Gain = 65 Offset = 69 Exposure time = 0.0313 Histogram = unticked.  Auto setting of the Histogram makes Mars a very bright ball on screen so I lowered (moved it left) the Histograms top slider just before the initial green graph markings and raised (moved it right) the bottom Histogram slider past the last of the green graph so that Mars was now visible on screen with faint planetary markings. Then clicked start and captured some 220 images to the hard drive.
	Image to the right is the real size as taken through a X4 Barlow on my 222mm f/7.2 Newtonian at f/28.8.  Click this image to see a X2 enlargement (done in The Gimp) This is the result of the above effort.  This is an image comprising of 211 frames stacked in Registax.

Deep Sky Imaging.
NGC891 single frame.	Capturing deep sky images is different as you are now trying to capture as much light as possible.  Most of the deep sky objects are very faint so may require exposures in minutes rather than seconds.  so I use different setting like these below. Apply after = 0 frames Image process = Deep Sky Evaluation count =  1 Min Quality = 0 Combine = ticked Save as bmp, save every frame for later stacking in Registax and tweating the Waveletts if suitable. Colour = sharp and auto Gain = 100% Offset = 50% Exposure time = Start at 1 second and increase to the maximum allowed by the periodic error of my mount. Histogram = ticked to start with but may untick it to get a better image or more definition.
	26th September, 2005 The image here is NGC891 in Andromeda and shines a mag 10.9.  This object was not seen in the telescopes eyepiece because of light pollution and was only found with star hopping,  grabbing an image and moving on till the object was central on screen. Here I used everything in the imaging software on Auto for the capture except for the Min Quality and Evaluation.  These I set to 0 and 1 respectively.  Saved in .bmp format with save all uncombined.  80 X 15 second images stacked in Registax and final tweak of curves done in The Gimp.
On closer inspection you can see that the stars have started to elongate.  This is my periodic error which I have to combat with autoguiding.  One more thing about this image,  why is it in black and white yet it was taken with a colour camera ? As can be seen here at 15 seconds multiplied by 80 images the DSI can grab a decent image. More images would have smoothed out the noisy parts in this image even better. The skies here in the Midlands of the UK are not very good for deepsky imaging so I have found it best to take many images with shorter exposures to cambat the light pollution.  The image would have better depth with longer exposures but sky fog (light pollution) would then take a greater part and probably hide some of the fainter detail.  Whether some kind of broad band filters such as the EHC (Extremely high contrast) or Ha (Hydrogen Alpha) I do not as yet know.  One thing to bear in mind when contemplating using these kind of filters is that your exposure settings must go up from several seconds to several minutes.   Hence the need for autoguiding.
	28th August, 2005 First image is M31 using 10 frames of 30 secs each.  Using the 135mm lens and X2 converter giving 270mm set at f/4.  This was a very windy night.   30th August, 2005 The second image is again M31.  The night was a little more transparent then 2 nights ago.  Again 135mm lens and the X2 converter using the same setting as below except the exposure was 90 seconds or 20 frames.  As you can see there is a bit more detail in the image but I think I need to extend the exposure more.  I think there is too much glass in the optical train which is causing the colours to separate hence the red and blue halos around some of the stars.  This can also be caused by the mist that seems to be ever present these days.
	Here is how I did it.      I have a small plate that sits on top of my EQ5 mount and on this I have mounted a screw fitting to accept a small finder scope 30x6 and a lens clamp which the 135mm lens sits in.  This is all mounted on top of my EQ5 and set up in the normal way.  I have tried using the the static tripod but at these exposures (exposure of 4 seconds and above) star trailing is soon shown. Image process = Deep Sky Evaluation count =  1 Min Quality = 0 Combine = ticked Save as bmp, save every frame. Colour = sharp and auto Histo = auto. Exposure = 30 and 90 seconds These frames are aligned and stacked in Registax.  Colours tweaked in The Gimp.