From: Milton Aupperle <milton@outcastsoft.com>

Date: July 15, 2009 9:39:39 AM MDT

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: [Astro_IIDC] I think this is my best Jupiter image so far!

Hi Terrence;

On 15-Jul-09, at 9:07 AM, Terrence Redding wrote:

Tim, I am not familiar with the camera you used - but assume it is a color firewire camera.  I notice they have them from 80 fps down to 7.5 fps.  I assume the higher frame rates are needed to freeze the rapid rotation of Jupiter, something like a 9.5 hour day.

Actually, the cameras can run as high as 400 frames per second to 1 hour per frame.

The higher frame rates are primarily used to try to reduce turbulence at long focal lengths and to capture as many frames as possible during periods of good seeing.

But I would appreciate hearing comments on which cameras are best for which applications.  I am also interested in inserting a date/time stamp on the individual frames to support photometry.  Is there a system for doing that with firewire?

With Astro IIDC, the time stamp is embedded in the movie as a Time Code Track with a UTC time. It can be hidden or shown afterwards in the movie after capture. With QT 7.x, the time code track can be seen while the movie is playing, whether it's hidden or shown.

Astro IIDC uses the time code for when calculating photometric changes too.

Note that the time stamp is not physically embedded In the movie (although it could be shown and then re-compressed to burn it in), as that will cause all sorts of issues when stacking frames.

HTH..

Milton J. Aupperle