<< return to Vizycam.com

Astrophotography

Hi Ed,
Do you remember the exposure settings? You should be able to adjust the exposure and gain lower enough to get a decent exposure, although the slider might be a little fiddly with the lower exposure values.

Edward

No, I don’t remember the exact settings.

Actually, thinking about this, over exposure shouldn’t be an issue - we can always just stop down the lens.

It looks like it’s going to be clear again here tonight. I’ll try to do a more controlled experiment and report back.

I tried again last night and was able to focus on a bright, distant light with preview and take some long exposure photos.

A couple of questions:

  1. The WiFi signal in my back yard is weak. Once Vizy lost WiFi, it never re-connected to the network even when I brought it back inside. Should it reconnect automatically?

  2. I was powering the Vizy through the USB C connector and this worked fine. But when I tried to do a safe shut-down by holding the button, I think it worked - but the button was still lit. Is this normal?

Hi Ed,
Glad you got some pics :slight_smile:

Currently Vizy will try to connect to the last network it successfully connected to. It will attempt to connect only one time upon boot up. If it’s unsuccessful, it will go into access point mode.

If Vizy connects successfully and then loses connection, it doesn’t do anything. It should probably do something… it should probably go into AP mode. (AP mode is a good fallback because it allows you to connect and reconfigure networking, etc.) There are some challenges with these kinds of things because losing the network can be difficult to detect. But for now at least you can power cycle Vizy and it will reconnect.

That’s correct – when powering through the USB C port, you’re bypassing the power board and Vizy can’t switch off power. It can still shut itself down cleanly though. The beep will tell you that things are shut down and you can safely remove power.

Edward

Hi gentlemen

Is there anyone connecting vizy to telescope to have an external pc control?
Wiring details will be welcome.
App will be released?

Thanks in advance

Hello,
We expect the first versions of the astronomy app to be out this summer. Sorry for the delays – we’re running a bit behind schedule with the software development.

What do you mean by “external pc control”?

Edward

Hi
Dreaming of telescope control via app, http://vizy.local/?

Is this too crazy?

Regards

Fernando

Hello,
The astronomy app will control the telescope mount if it’s motorized and has serial input/control. We are targeting the Celestron NexStar (alt-az) mounts first. What telescope mount are you using?

Edward

I have Celestron NexStar 127SLT, happy to see it in your target

Hello Edge has there been any developments been dragged away by busy stuff now back to look at this a bit again for a bit?
love to hear where things have got to.
Jim

Hello,
Our apologies, the Astronomy application is overdue. We’ve been focused on other things (improving CNN performance, adding texting support), but we do plan on working on the Astronomy application after we get this next release out, which will be before the end of the year.

We do have basic motion control of the Celestron NexStar series working – this is fairly recent. To give me a better idea of your specific needs/wants –
What type of telescope do you plan on using with Vizy?
What kinds of objects do you want to visualize the most? (e.g. planets, galaxies, nebulae)

Edward

I have a suggestion, that might be a good first step, put in a solar eclipse mode.
It should work with a static scope. if I pull out in scope once in ten years I ain’t got that figured out.
It should save the data such that it can be post processed with some widely available tools.

Hello,
I think solar astronomy is often overlooked. You are interested in gathering images during the solar eclipse? What are you interested in imaging? The timelapse, the corona, (?)

Edward

I was thinking just a time lapse, but I was also just trying to think of a simple minimum base that you could start the project with. Rather than jumping for the all of the complication of a goto scope, get images off of a locked scope. the really high end is filled with cooled ccd cameras, so you have to have a painless imaging handling solution,
And get it working before April.

Hello,
Taking time lapse with a short lens is seems to be popular so that you capture larger sections of the sky. What are you wanting to capture?

Edward

Hello
Sounds like you are making some progress. I have a Celestron Nexstar 8i. Still learning how to use it but making some progress. I think that I mentioned earlier that the ability to collect stacked images for lower light image collection. Binning is something I have also read about that can improve image collection sensitivity from what I understand ythe camera sensor has that capability inherent to it.
Jim

Hi Jim,
I’m glad you have a Nexstar :slight_smile: It’s a really great scope for the price in my opinion. “Live image stacking” is one of the things we’ll implement. Binning is on the list too as well as “plate matching”. There is an impressive amount of Python code for this kind of image processing in the community that we plan on using. The first astronomy app won’t be out quickly enough though, so my apologies. :frowning:

The next release won’t include the astronomy app, unfortunately. It will be released in early January. Work on the astronomy app will begin shortly thereafter.

Edward

In April the effort would to get the solar eclipse.

Hello,
It would be great to track the sun and create a movie. Do you have a motorized mount? Are you in Australia?

Edward

Actually it not that good of a story. I miss-read the date. I am looking at the 2024 April eclipse in the US.

But the sun is a easy target for any idiot to line the scope on. I have an old etx-90 probably not worth automating but lines up on the sun just fine. High end astro isn’t going to use your camera they want cooled CCD stuff or at least specialized to the type of astronomy they do. So you should focus on easy to setup with a low end scope, or perhaps interfacing with existing astronomy software.