Sunday, October 06, 2013
Here Comes Junior!
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| M17... |
Not that I
didn’t try. On one of this past summer’s rare clear, moonless nights, I packed
up Junior, the C8, the laptop, the video gear, and all the other astro-junk I
need to do a Mallincam run and headed for my old buddy Pat’s observatory. Set
everything up, aligned the mount, pointed the C8 at M13, and got—nuttin’ honey.
Well, next
to nothing, anyhow. What I saw on the monitor was a dim round spot, not a ball
of stars. At first I figgered I just didn’t know how to work the Junior, which
is a little different from my Xtreme. But none of the settings I tried helped,
and I couldn’t think of what else to do. Not that thinking was easy when I was
dripping with sweat and being feasted on by mosquitoes the size of humming
birds. I gave it up as a bad bidness and tore the rig down.
Soon as I
removed the camera from the C8’s rear cell, I could see what the problem was: the Meade f/3.3 reducer was completely
fogged. A look at the corrector plate up front on the scope showed it was well on the
way to being dewed-up, too, despite me having kicked the DewBuster heater up a
notch. That’s how bad it was, y’all. On a night when the ‘Buster can’t keep
your optics clear, you are better off inside watching Svengoolie. So, I didn’t say anything to you-all about Junior. What
was there to say? I’d have to bide my time till we got weather good enough to
give the camera a fair trial.
I finally
got that last weekend, but before I let you-all in on the details, let’s back up
to Square One and talk about the camera itself. When I heard from my friend
Jack Huerkamp, the U.S. distributor of the Mallincam gear, that Rock M. was releasing a new “novice” camera, the Junior Pro, I was overjoyed. The Mallincam
Xtreme is a fine machine, but the price of admission is a wee bit high to
attract folks just getting into video. Yeah, there was the (standard) Mallincam
Junior, but it and its competition, the Orion StarShoot vidcam, are limited to
short exposures and that is purty limiting for even beginning
astrovideographers. You can do the Messier with ‘em, but it’s hard to go much
past that.
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| Not shown are the video cable and AC supply... |
To keep the
price down, a couple of the Xtreme’s more expensive-to-implement features have
been eliminated. Most importantly, the Junior’s chip is not cooled. And the
shutter control system for long exposures has been simplified. The Xtreme
allows you to set-up and execute long integrations from a computer or with the
Mallincam wireless shutter controller. The Junior Pro doesn't have computer
shutter control, so it requires you
to use the wireless HC. The upside is Junior can use a less expensive shutter
controller than the Xtreme, and one is included in the purchase price.
What did I
find in the box when the cam arrived at the Old Manse? Most of all, the camera
itself (the standard chip model). When I pulled it out of its box, I was
immediately impressed by its build quality. It looks just like an Xtreme. It is
as solidly built and even has Rock’s signature, his signature, on its bottom just
like the more expensive camera. Also in the box are the wireless remote, its
receiver that plugs into the camera, a 1.25-inch nosepiece for Junior, a Video/power
cable for the cam, and an AC power supply.
Anything not
included with the camera that I wished had been? One minor quibble is a lens cap or lack
thereof. The camera comes with a screw-on dust cap to protect the CCD sensor.
That’s cool, but most of us will leave the 1.25-inch nosepiece on the camera
all the time and there wasn’t a 1.25-inch lens cap for it.
More
significant is the lack of an included serial cable for Junior. While you can’t control the camera’s long exposures with a computer,
you can set all its other functions from your laptop. Unfortunately, you won't find a PC control cable
in the box. You can purchase one separately, but a serial cable needs to be
standard equipment in this old boy’s opinion.
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| Junior's rear... |
How do you set
things like gain and gamma without a computer? With small buttons on the
camera’s rear that throw up a display on your video (not computer) screen. I
tried these at Pat’s and found I didn't like ‘em. Fumbling with little buttons
in the dark is not my idea of a good time. You can use a wired five button
remote in lieu of the camera buttons, but that is, like a computer cable, an
extra cost option ($179).
Since most
of us will operate Junior on DC from a 12-volt battery at least occasionally, I’d
have liked to have found a DC cord included as well. The camera draws very
little current and there is really no reason not to operate on battery all the
time. That is exactly what I do with my Xtreme. Running on battery ensures the
cleanest current and thus the cleanest video possible.
Finally,
while I have a pre-production camera and am not positive what sort of manual
comes with Junior now, I suspect it is the same printed pages I got and which
can be downloaded from Jack’s fine website.
These files will allow just about anybody to get the camera and wireless remote
going tout suite. HOWSOMEEVER…the
information you need is scattered across several documents. What I want novices
to get is an integrated
beginner-centric manual. One that takes the newbie through every single step in
a-b-c fashion.
After familiarizing
myself with the Junior Pro as well as I could indoors, all I needed was a decent night
so I could give ol’ Jr. a workout. While continuing to wait for the rains to
stop, I did get computer control squared away. I dang sure knew I wanted to operate
the camera with a laptop rather than use those devilish little buttons, and I had the serial cable from my Xtreme on hand. However, Mr. Jack
informed me the software I use for the Xtreme would not work with the
Junior Pro, and that I’d have to go on his download site and get a version for
the new camera. Sure hoped I wouldn't have to learn new software and a new camera.
The program was easy to download and install, and playing with the software indoors revealed it to be nearly
identical to the Xtreme’s control program. No, you can’t set long integrations,
but everything else is there, including a checkbox that throws up crosshairs on
the screen, a great go-to alignment aid.
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| At the PSAS Dark Site... |
I could have
cut back on the stuff a little, I reckon, but I didn’t, since I had another
agenda in addition to letting Junior strut his stuff. With our favorite local
star party, the Deep South Regional Star Gaze,
just a month away, I wanted to give all the equipment a good check out,
especially the new VX mount.
Actually,
I’d had the VX since May, but I’d only been able to use it a grand total of four
freaking times. And two of those times were undemanding Lunar imaging runs. One
other VX session was cut short after just a few experimental go-tos to deep sky
objects, and one was that abortive night at Pat’s observatory. Most of
all, I wanted to make sure the mount worked OK with NexRemote. That program is key for
the type of amateur astronomy Unk practices these days, “senior citizen astronomy.” I sit warm and cozy under a tailgating canopy,
observe with a Mallincam, and run the telescope mount with NexRemote.
So, the whole schmeer went in the truck: My beautiful
Edge 800 C8, Mrs. Emma Peel. VX mount. The Junior Pro. The Toshiba laptop.
Three jumpstart batteries. DVD player that serves as a video display. Wireless
wingman gamepad/joystick I use with NexRemote
as the mount’s “HC.” Couple of gear boxes. Cables aplenty. Can of fraking
Monster Energy Drink. You get the picture.
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| The video settings menu... |
I still had
hopes, and, sure enough, just as Polaris winked on, the greasy gray miscreants
floating across the sky began to thin. I was able to get the North Star lined
up in the hollow bore of the VX RA housing, at least. I’d also do an AllStar polar
alignment in the interest of good tracking, of course. That’s what I planned,
anyway. With a small video chip and its relatively high “magnification factor,”
a good—if not necessarily perfect—polar alignment is necessary if you want
round stars in even 15-second exposures.
Shortly, it
was dark enough to begin the VX’s go-to alignment. Fired up Junior, setting him
to expose for 2-seconds, and lit-off NexRemote
on the PC. Mrs. Peel (well, NR’s Microsoft Mary voice) announced, “Press Enter to begin alignment,” and we
were off to the races. I didn't have a bit of trouble with NexRemote on the VX all night long; it worked just as well as on
the CG5.
Only slight
bummer? I have not been able to get the Celestron Auxiliary Port Accessory that provides the CG5 with a PC port to work with the new mount. So,
instead of hooking the laptop directly to the VX, I have to run it through the
RS-232 port on the base of the hand control. That is not a big deal, but I do prefer
not to have to keep up with a cotton-picking hardware HC. Anyhoo, it sure is
nice to be able to use the “normal” Celestron NexStar HC NexRemote throws up onscreen instead of the pea-picking Celestron Plus hand control that came with the VX,
and which I don’t like a-tall.
I was able
to get a two-star alignment done somehow, but it wasn’t easy. The clouds were
back with a vengeance, and the two stars NexRemote
picked were soon obscured. I kept mashing Undo, and finally got two, Vega and
Deneb, that were visible (through clouds). It was the same with the calibration
stars. I was not able to find four, so I had to settle for three. And those
three were not the ones the HC initially suggested.
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| Mrs. Peel... |
Time to
tighten up my rough polar alignment. I slewed to Nunki in Sagittarius, which
was well placed for an AllStar polar alignment, being almost due south. When the
star was in the field, I hit align, invoked the AllStar routine, and followed
the instructions, re-centering the star with the HC (actually with my Wingman
joystick) when the mount slewed off it. Next step was to center Nunki using
only the mount’s altitude and azimuth controls after the VX slewed away from it
one last time.
As I peered up
at the star through Mrs. Peel’s Rigel Quickfinder, it disappeared behind a
cloudbank. Well, shoot. Maybe the clouds would wander off if I waited a bit?
Nope. They seemed to have taken up permanent residence in the south. I gave up on
AllStar, desyncing Nunki and sending Mrs. Peel to M13 as a go-to test.
The big glob
was dang near dead center, and even when I increased the exposure to 15-seconds,
tracking seemed OK. Not perfect, but OK. I had gotten lucky when I’d positioned
Polaris in the polar bore. Actually, I’d cheated.
I used the star chart generated by a new iPhone program, Orion’s StarSeek Pro (from the SkySafari folks), to help get me closer
to the pole than I would have just by centering Polaris.
Not that I
was happy with the way M13 looked on the monitor, e’en after I upped the
exposure to 15-seconds. What it was was a small fuzz-spot surrounded by a meager
handful of stars. ‘Bout the same it had been on that cursed night over at
Pat’s. Was the Junior bunk or junk or maybe both? I was getting more and more put
out by the minute. Once again, nothing I changed on the camera settings helped
a bit. The only encouraging thing was that the Junior software was just as easy
to use as the Xtreme version and seemed to work OK. Too bad the camera didn't.
 |
| M13... |
When they
did, I took a break, had a critical look at the sky, and consulted with Jon and
Max. Sure hated to come all the way out to the PSAS site and go home with
nothing but 30-seconds of M13 to show for my trouble. At least I had been able
to check out the mount with NexRemote,
and I now at least had some idea of
the camera’s capabilities. Well, no need
to be hasty; I’d give the sky half an hour and see what happened.
What happened
was that about 15-minutes later I looked to the east and saw we were going to get
some big-time clearing. For a while. There might be another mess of clouds on
the way, but it ‘peared we would have an hour or two before they were overhead.
The summer
Milky Way was riding high and beginning to burn as the sky cleared. Its
southern end was still compromised by clouds, so I headed to its northern expanse.
I’d been working on a magazine article on open clusters, and I thought I’d have
a look-see at two of my favorites, M52 and M103 in Cassiopeia, both to check Junior
and to make sure I wasn’t misremembering how good they were. Both were
beautiful in the camera, with compact M103 being the prize.
An open
cluster ain’t much of a test of a vidcam, though. What else was available?
Looked like M15 would be in the clear shortly. When the VX stopped, the tight
little globular with the blazing core was near the center of the frame, and, just
like M13, looked every bit the equal of what the Xtreme does with it. “OK, OK,
that’s fine for a bright Messier. How about something a little tougher, there, JUNIOR?”
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| NGC 7331 |
How did the
lack of cooling affect images? There was no denying Junior’s frames were
noisier than what’s normal for the Xtreme. There were more warm pixels and the
background was not as smooth as with the cooled camera, and that tended to
obscure details. Still, all objects looked considerably better than they would
have in my old uncooled Stellacam 2, even at twice as long an exposure as the Stellacam’s
10-second maximum.
By the way,
I didn’t have much trouble with the wireless controller. Oh, I did fumble
around till I gave the instructions a closer read, but after that it was
reasonably smooth sailing. I still prefer being able to set integration time
with the computer, but that is just me. One thing in its favor: having the wireless means you can leave the
computer at home if’n you want, using the remote and the onscreen menus to
control the cam. Any down
checks regarding the exposure controller system? I do think there needs to be
some kind of mounting for the receiver on the camera. I fixed it in place with
a piece of Velcro so it wouldn’t just be dangling by its cord, but a bracket of
some sort would be nice.
How about the dreaded AMP GLOW? At20-seconds it was very minor, as you can see in the stills here. The brightening of one corner of a video camera’s frame due
to the CCD chip’s onboard amplifier doesn't bother me at all, but it does annoy some folks. If
that includes you, I think you will find Junior more than acceptable in that
regard. Do understand that if you crank up the gain and exposure enough, you will see plenty of glow, just as with the Xtreme.
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| Stephen's Quintet... |
The images you see here are not Photo-shopped stacks, by the way. They are single frame screen grabs that have been tweaked minimally at most—usually I just adjusted the levels to make them slightly more contrasty. The live videos are mucho bettero than these minimalist stills. If you are curious about the raw videos, see the M57 sequence I’ve posted on the cotton-picking Youtube (below). Do keep in mind that Youtube compresses videos. A lot.
“Alright Mr. Smarty Pants Junior Pro, let’s see how you handle Stephan’s Quintet.” The famous group of small and dim galaxies just to the south of the Deerlick didn’t look like much, but it was definitely visible in my video with 20-seconds of exposure. And the reason it didn’t look like much was that the less than 800mm of focal length delivered by the C8 and Meade 3.3 reducer just didn’t yield enough image scale to make the little fellers show much detail.
I felt like Junior
had shown his mettle, but I still wanted to see how he did with some
showpieces. The Ring Nebula, M57, was as good as he is with the Xtreme under
similar conditions—purty dang nice, that is. M27, the glorious Dumbbell nebula in
nearby Vulpecula? Same-same. Hell, even the dadgum Crescent Nebula, NGC 6888,
showed its dim self to Junior.
To finish
out the evening, I did the spectacles of the south. You know, M11, M17, M16,
M22, M8. All looked good; nearly as good as they would have been on a similar
night with the Xtreme. That said, there is, again, no doubt the Xtreme’s
cooling makes it better, especially when you go to longer exposures. On the
other hand, this new camera is considerably cheaper and more capable
than the Stellacam 2, which I loved and which I used to image the bulk of the Herschel Project objects.
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| M8, the Lagoon Nebula... |
M8, the
Lagoon Nebula, in the can, the clouds were back, the humidity was up, and the
temperature was dropping down into the low 60s. I was tired and chilled and got
started breaking down the gear.
Final
thoughts back at Chaos Manor South? With those silly Ghost Adventures playing in the background (missed Svengoolie,
alas) I sat and ruminated about Junior’s performance. Didn't take much thinking
to conclude I was fraking delighted with the camera. Hell, I’d have been
blown away if it had worked half as well as it had. I’d still like to try it
under a really dark sky and with a mild LPR filter at the PSAS site, but I have
no hesitation in giving it a hearty
Uncle Rod double thumbs up.
This camera
isn’t just a great introduction to video astronomy at a reasonable price for
those of y’all who have been sitting on the fence; it is capable of doing real work. I have little doubt I could image
even the dimmest Herschels with this 600 buck rig. You cannot beat that with a
stick, muchachos.
Next Time:
My Favorite Star Parties: CSSP
2006…
Comments:
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Hey unk, are all the pics above 20s exposures? I'm really interested in say a min or so, ya think that is too much for the uncooled junior?
Hi John:
I think a couple may have been as high as 28-seconds...but...1-minute is hard at my (semi) dark site much of the time and depending where you point in the sky, 1-minute is often too much. Yes, that sensitive. ;-)
I think a couple may have been as high as 28-seconds...but...1-minute is hard at my (semi) dark site much of the time and depending where you point in the sky, 1-minute is often too much. Yes, that sensitive. ;-)
Mallincam JR PRO "PC version" (not wireless version) has got wired laptop control over long remote control cable for up to 99 mins exposure, so I read. Mallincam wireless remote not needed or used. That's the version of the MC JR PRO I would buy, not the wireless version.
BTW what's with the 'scope dewing over? Our 8" LX90 never dews over even with fog a few metres below us down the hill, since we use a Dew-Not heater strip around the top of the corrector cell (NOT behind it like some do) AND a cardboard DIY dew shield over the heater strip and most of the front of the tube (insulates the heater strip and improves it's effectiveness), dew can be dripping down the tripod legs but corrector stays clear!
Best Regards, Alistair G.
BTW what's with the 'scope dewing over? Our 8" LX90 never dews over even with fog a few metres below us down the hill, since we use a Dew-Not heater strip around the top of the corrector cell (NOT behind it like some do) AND a cardboard DIY dew shield over the heater strip and most of the front of the tube (insulates the heater strip and improves it's effectiveness), dew can be dripping down the tripod legs but corrector stays clear!
Best Regards, Alistair G.
To: MoJocvh above, Yes the Mallincam's are available in UK, we are in NW England and my friend Jon H. ordered a Mallincam Xtreme X2 with Class 0 sensor and it arrived from Rock Mallin via Jack's Astro within 9 weeks (took 6 weeks for the waiting list, plus a few weeks of waiting for the more rare class 0 sensor, plus 2 weeks for postage and Customs clearance). Yes we had to pay 20 per cent VAT on it. Yes our warranty was still intact. Rock supported us 100 per cent. No problems at all. Cheers, Alistair G.
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