This is a synopsis of my experience with video astronomy.
To date I have used video equipment to:
Record the crash of the Prospector lunar satellite into the surface
of the Moon
Record and view high magnification images of Mars, Jupiter and
Saturn. Record meteor showers and record a Transit of Venus
This was my set up for video taping the crash of the
lunar orbiter "Prospector",
which, as you may already know, yeilded nothing. It was a good
excercise in transporting and setting up the equipment. At this
event, I had the Astrovid 2000 at prime focus of the Parks 10"
in the cassegrain mode and the SuperCircuits PC-23C on the Celestron
C102 which is piggy backed on the Parks mount. The Parks/Astrovid
combo were recorded on the Sony Hi8 camcorder and the Celestron/SuperCircuits
combo were recorded on the TV/VCR. A detailed review of the tapes
revealed nothing visible, which wasn't so bad once they announced
that the Hubble didn't see anything either....
This image was captured from VHS video tape of the PC-23C/Celestron
combination recording.
The images from the Astrovid 2000/Parks combination
were deliberately overexposed in an attempt to capture a dim dust
plume.
I have also spent some time in my own driveway in the heart of
Memphis, TN recording some incredible views of Jupiter and Saturn.
Unfortunately, I have not mastered frame grabbing yet, so the
stills that I will post here don't seem to do justice to the quality
of the video when watched on a television monitor. They looked
realy neat on a big screen TV.
Here is a picture of my Venus Transit setup. I hope to post some video of the transit here in a few days.
