The Mira variable Chi Cygni found in the Constellation of Cygnus, is rapidly icreasing in brightness ahead of it's 29th December maxima! This image below right, is by Doncaster Astronomical Society member Brian Joynes taken with a CCD-camera and 14" SCT is from 9th November!

On this site, I publish my Double Star measures and Variable Star magnitude estimates. Astrophotograpy is a branch of Astronomy that I have become involved with from 2003. Using a webcam attached to the drawtube of a telescope can give some remarkably decent images. Let'snot foreget good old slide film that I use in a 35mm SLR camera. Images of Constellations and star fields is how I make use of that media. It has taken a more serious turn since the Observatory, run by Doncaster Astronomical Society, was built in the Summer of 2004. This year (2008) saw a second Dome built at the Observatory. With advice from colleagues in the Society and sharing observing sessions, my attempts to obtain images has shown a marked improvement since my first initial stumblings.

The telescopes I use are the 14" f10 Meade Schmidt-Cassegrain at the Observatory located at Austerfield Field Study Center and my own 8" f6 SCT that gets an occassional airing from my back garden. The Webcam is a Philips Toucam Pro PC740K which provides excellant images through use of variable exposure settings, gain, contrast etc.

Of course once you have the webcam file, you need to process it to obtain a sharp, crisp still image. There are various freeware packages on the Web for both the PC and Mac, amongst those for the PC are Cor Berrevoet's excellant Registax.

So enough of my ramblings, look through my site and feel free to drop me an email at: astro@abovethecloud.org.uk

Clear Skies!
John


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---Updated 14/11/2009---

All images © 1995-2009 John Cox