Astronomy - CCD first steps


After long time i finaly found some time to finish (better to say start finishing) astronomy - ccd project. The KAF-401 CCD chip was lying more than one year in a drawer... shame on me! Ok, it took few days to put all tegeather and i got first results. It took two days to compose the camera and another two days to find the focus on the telescope. After a day of useless trying to acquire a first picture from the sky, using a laptop, audineccd driver for linux and rbaud command line tool te get pictures i decided to start thinking. First i had problems with the software. All this stuff is written for win95 OS. But those guys in Redmond decided to make life tough for programmers, who want to acces directly to the ports of PC. They should take MCSE course, learn to write windows drivers... but why do they not do this???? Ok, i took linux and tried to run this stuff with "wine". I could run "IRIS", but the functions to read the camera still wont work.. So i used it only to display images. Ok, what about focus? I have a 110mm newton, russian origin, there is no company tag on it but it is very stable, heavy, and performing very good. I could not use it withowt eyepiece because focus is too deep to reach. So i took eyepiece, and tried to make some shots. It took a long time, so the next day i made a special device, i called it focusfinder, and with the help of fool moon, in 15 minits i had first sucessfull picture.
oh, will tell also this, just before that i burned the 74hc14 - smd on Audine - i was not carefull and was pulling it out of enclosure with voltages applyed.. dont make this mistake, it could be even worse...
For this device i used a paper box, plastic tube and a piece of semi transparent (paus) paper. Put the paper to the one end of tube, this will be our screen. Then the tube goes through the box, and by moveing it up and down try to make a sharp picture of sume bright object. The best for this work is a moon, with enough light and size.
After first successful shots i discovered that i need a tracking system. Thanks God, my proprety is very similar to surpluss store, so i found all that was necesary at home, so i was able to finish it in one afternoon..


Story in pictures


Demo version of body
Focus finding
using Focus finding device
marking focus
first picture
first usefull picture - mars without shutter
again mars - manual shutter (hat over the telescope)
tracking system
top view
finished tracking system
young assistant (or disturbant..)
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