Bromsgrove Astronomical Society – Webcam Imaging

Went to a meeting of the Bromsgrove Astronomical Society. I’m thinking of joining. I’d considered Birmingham or Walsall’s groups but they’re too urban. I’m looking for one that gives an opportunity to observe away from the city lights but that isn’t too far.
It was a wet evening so no chance for observing but there was a very interesting talk with a lot of in depth detail on webcam imaging. I learnt a few interesting things that I hope to put into practice.
– Maximum capture times for various solar system objects to reduce blurring due to the speed of their rotation.
– Frame rates
– using the histogram in Sharpcap to optimise exposure
– what gamma is
– which webcams to use. Annoyingly the best webcam still seems to the rare and almost out of date Philips Toucam or SPC900. Ideally I’d like to get my hands on one of them without spending a fortune second hand on eBay. There must still be loads sitting in boxes in spare rooms unused. Otherwise it seems to be the costly dedicated astro-webcams. For the moment I’ll stick with the AsdaCAM I hacked together.

Bromsgrove Astro Open Evening – Monday 15 October 2012

I went across to an open evening at Bromsgrove Astro this evening. It’s a bit out of a distance about half an hour away but that’s a good thing. They hold their meetings at Bromsgrove Rugby Club. Seemed quite dark there, once they have the floodlights off and they also have access to a dark site.
I’ve been to a few Walsall Astro events but they meet on a Thursday which clashes with my ukulele activities so whilst I have an affinity for Walsall, having grown up round there, that’s out.
Spoke to a couple of members who were friendly and gave me some good advice on stacking and processing the imaging data I collected in Oman (astronomer talk for photos what I took).
I’m seriously thinking of joining due to the combination of a dark place to observe safely and access to people with experience I can learn from.