Fascinated by pictures like this, you plug down $2,000.00 for new a telescope. Point it up to see for yourself and it looks like this. You wonder, where did I go wrong? Oh, I know, a bigger lens and a reducer-corrector should do it. So, 300 hours later, an image looks twice as good as this. Not half as good as this, twice as good as this. It does not take long to learn, you have to use a camera. Unfortunately, cameras for telescopes cost about the same as a telescope or even more, much more.
You can shortcut the process using just a webcam, and immediately get images like this. There is software like K3CCD, you can download for free, designed specifically the work of webcams to take optional pictures. That is how these were done. For pictures of faint things, like galaxies and nebulas, you need to modify the webcam. Here is an example of how to turn a webcam into a low exposure after cam. A lot of people start with PVC parts, but there are the rules.
This is a camera about, it made of 2” couplers of blogs. You need a part to connect the camera to the telescope. This one is aluminum. Here you see the cut out for the Paltrier chip the heat sink. Heat strips are actually refrigerators, one side is hot the other gets cold. The imaging chips heats up when it works, so you have to cool it to keep from ruining the picture.
This is how you connect the refrigerator chip to the CCD imager. Not into the base, it looks like this. There are actually two cameras being built. You need to use a little thermal grease between the two parts. Notice here, heat sink with the fan has been attached for cooling the hot side of the Peltier chip. Add some installation to cover the cold parts.
The Plastic Rain will eventually support the imager. These T rings on extensions connect the camera to the sculpt reducer-corrector. The chips get so cold, you have to purge the camera to free out CO2 or something on Earth to keep froze from forming over the CCD window. If you do not believe it, here it is turned on. ISOs formed on the tip where the CCD chip will go.
This is the webcam motherboard. It is very small, one by one in a quarter inch. The CCD is at the bottom. You have to add side and remove this part. Grinds some of perf board and gather some small wires for working with the CCD. You will need to add extension wires to the CCD pins, spread out a little to line up with the holes, thread the wires through, and level the window with the Perf board. Sander the leaves on the front side, these wires are really small. Make sure you always protect the CCD window with masking tape. Cover the back side and all the wholes with more tape. Then run a piece of tape completely around the outside. You then pour approximate to the tape their and let it cure.
Drill the epoxy out of the mounting holes, but do not leave the CCD unprotected like this when you work. Sand the epoxy down to the level of the back side of the chip. It has to be even, all the way around. Thread the CCD wires through the camera base. Put the insulator and the CCD mouth back in, and put thermal grease at the end of the cold figure. Screw the CCD holler to mouth and tuck in all the wires.
If everything goes all right, it will look something like this. Here are some of the parts needed to make the steve chambers long exposure mud. You can find the instructions on the web for all the different kinds of MUDs can be made. This one is kind of old now. You probably want to make one of this. It is an SC2.1 MUD. Here is the two U-Cam with the CCD removed and a wire started to the USB connectors.
I upgraded the original heat sink with this one. The cavity is for temperature sensor. The enclosure for the SC MUD board melts to the side like this. Heat shrinks on other wires for hooking up into the box. The mud has not been done yet, but it is hooked up, just to see if it will still work. Here, the pin a lift MUD has finally been made to the webcam circuit board, and protects it with the layer or the epoxy.
And now the SC MUD board itself is wired into the rest, then fold it down with the cover ready to be installed. All together, it looks like this. But this MUD is five years old. Cameras and computers change so fast, there are even better and easier ways of doing it now.
I wanted to have a read out of the chip and heat sink temperatures, so maybe, it is just play boxes. I made up from these chip electronic thermometers. They have two read outs. I sorted the blue sensor and extended using wires. The other one is already at the end of a long wire. You have to trim everything to make it fit into the project box.
Here is some of the plastic parts that are being tested, add connectors and put the circuit board into the box. Wire it all together in place. The black tube is a triple A battery it needs. The great plug is a parallel port connector. The black one is for the USB. The blue cables connect the camera to the read out box. Twelve Holts for the cooling chip go on the side, and there is a switch for turning the read out on and off. There are also larger chips that can be substituted for the originals.
Here is what one of them looks like in comparison. You make for the same way, but the wiring is a little different. You have to scramble it, connects to some fort to directly wire up, but if you do it right, they will go right in. These cameras have a wider field of view. These images are all made using those cameras. And here is an image of that nebula from the beginning, a vast and inexpensive improvement.
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