1. Manuals
  2. Brands
  3. Orion Manuals
  4. Digital Imaging Accessories
  5. 52083
  6. Instruction manual

Orion 52083 Instruction Manual

Orion telescopes & binoculars telescope user manual
Hide thumbs
Table of Contents

Advertisement

Quick Links

INSTRUCTION MANUAL
Orion
StarShoot
®
™
Deep Space Monochrome Imager II
#52083
Providing Exceptional Consumer Optical Products Since 1975
Customer Support (800) 676-1343
E-mail: support@telescope.com
Corporate Offices (831) 763-7000
P.O. Box 1815, Santa Cruz, CA 95061
IN 320 Rev. A 10/07

Advertisement

Table of Contents
loading
Need help?

Need help?

Do you have a question about the 52083 and is the answer not in the manual?

Questions and answers

Subscribe to Our Youtube Channel

Related Manuals for Orion 52083

Summary of Contents for Orion 52083

  • Page 1 INSTRUCTION MANUAL Orion StarShoot ® ™ Deep Space Monochrome Imager II #52083 Providing Exceptional Consumer Optical Products Since 1975 Customer Support (800) 676-1343 E-mail: support@telescope.com Corporate Offices (831) 763-7000 P.O. Box 1815, Santa Cruz, CA 95061 IN 320 Rev. A 10/07...

  • Page 2: Parts List

    (Figure 2a). Important Note: Be sure to always firmly tighten the thumbscrew(s) that secures the SSDSMI-2 in the telescope focuser, or it could fall out and onto the ground! If your telescope is has T-threads for direct camera attachment, a more secure connection can be made.
  • Page 3 Figure 1. To use the SSDSMI-2, a telescope, mount, and computer are required. Securing thumbscrew Figure 2a. The SSDSMI-2 fits into 1.25" focuser, just like a standard 1.25" eyepiece. Firmly tighten the thumbscrew that secures the SSDSI in the focuser.
  • Page 4 Otherwise, the field of view may be too small to capture the entire deep sky object. To decrease the effective focal length of your telescope, use a focal reducer lens (available from Orion). If you are imaging planets, however, you will benefit from using a telescope with a long (over 1000mm) focal length. Or you can use a barlow lens to extend the effective focal length of your telescope to increase planetary image scale.
  • Page 5 Computer A computer is needed. For astro-imaging in the field at night, a laptop com- puter is highly recommended. Maxim DL Essentials requires Windows 2000, Windows XP, or Windows Vista. The following hardware is also required: • Processor – Pentium™ or equivalent, or higher •...

  • Page 6: Software And Driver Installation

    D-cell batteries (2) Figure 3. The 3V power supply (with two D-cell batteries installed) turns the TEC on when it is plugged into the SSDSMI-2. When the 3VDC power supply is plugged into the SSDSMI-2, the TEC is on (Figure 3). It takes about a minute for the TEC to provide maximum cooling, so wait a couple of minutes before you begin to capture images.

  • Page 7: Software Installation

    To install the camera driver on a Windows XP computer: 1. Make sure the CD-ROM is in the computer. 2. Connect the Orion StarShoot Deep Space Imager II to a USB port on the computer with the supplied USB cable. Windows will automatically detect the camera and start the Found New Hardware Wizard (Figure 5a).
  • Page 8 Figure 5a. When initially connecting the SSDSMI-2 to a Windows XP computer, the Found New Hardware Wizard will appear and guide you through driver installation. 7. Windows will note that the driver has not passed Windows Logo testing. This is normal. Click the Continue Anyway button. 8.
  • Page 9 7. When the window appears telling you “The software for this device has been successfully installed”, click Close. This completes the driver instal- lation process. Now, start the MaxIm DL Essentials Edition software. The camera will now be recognized, and the Camera Control Window (Figure 6) will appear. Once the driver is installed, the computer and software will recognize the SSDSMI-2 whenever it is plugged in.

  • Page 10: Getting Started During Daylight

    1⁄2" circle. If you are using a refractor telescope, then the hole should be cut so it is centered on the piece of cardboard. If you are using a reflector that has a central aperture obstruction, then the hole should be cut off to one side (in order to bypass the central obstruction).
  • Page 11 To obtain first images (in daylight) with the SSDSMI-2, follow these step-by- step instructions: 1. With an eyepiece inserted in the telescope, center and focus an object that is approximately 1⁄4 mile away. If you cannot focus your telescope this closely (due to lack of back-focus travel), then you will need to utilize an optional extension tube (available from Orion).
  • Page 12 Note: The camera’s field of view is fairly small. It is approximately equivalent to the field of view through the telescope when looking through a typical (i.e. not wide-field) 10mm focal length eyepiece. So make sure the object to be imaged is well centered in the telescope before connecting the SSDSMI-2, otherwise it may not appear in the field of view of the camera.
  • Page 13 Figure 9. The settings in the Screen Stretch Window greatly determine how an image will appear on your computer screen. Range of brightness levels When an image is displayed, you will notice a graph in the Screen Stretch Window. This is called the “histogram” of the currently displayed image (Figure 10).

  • Page 14: Astronomical Imaging

    Imaging the Moon is much like imaging terrestrial objects during the day. Since the exposure is very short, it is not critical that the telescope mount be pre- cisely polar aligned. Best focusing will be achieved by first focusing on a bright star near the Moon.
  • Page 15 To take multiple images of a planet for stacking: 1. Acquire the planet into the field of view of your telescope (barlow lens attached) with an eyepiece and center the planet in the eyepiece’s field of view.
  • Page 16 5. Now, in the box beneath the Mode box, choose Autosave. Set the number of images you would like the camera to take under Autosave (start with 10 or so), select the file folder in which you would like to save the images with Folder, and enter in a Base filename for the captured images.
  • Page 17 Figure 13. The Combine Images window allows “stacking” of individual images into one high-quality resultant image. Imaging Deep Sky Objects To capture breathtaking images of deep sky objects, such as galaxies, nebu- lae, and star clusters, much longer exposures are needed. As with planetary imaging, you will take several individual images and stack them together to form one high-quality resultant image.
  • Page 18 If there are no suitably bright stars in the camera’s field of view, you may need to move the telescope away from the deep sky object to a bright star, focus on the bright star, and then re-center the deep sky object in the camera.
  • Page 19 Note: In addition to Average mentioned above, 3 other different combining methods can be chosen: Sum, Median, and Sigma-Clip. To learn more about these combine methods, see “Image Processing – Combine Tips”. 10. Now, find a well-shaped (circular) star in the first image displayed. Use the mouse to center the crosshairs on the selected star and left-click.
  • Page 20 To take dark frames for subtraction from “light” images: 1. In the Camera Control Window, set the Mode to Dark 1x1. 2. Set the exposure time to whatever you set it to (or will set it to) for taking actual (“light”) images. Note: When taking dark frames, do not change any of the settings in the Setup button from what they were (or will be) when “light”...
  • Page 21 Remove the eyepiece and replace it with the SSDSMI-2. If the parfocal ring was set properly on the eyepiece, the camera should be close to focused. Precisely focus the camera by using the telescope’s focus knob and the Fast Focus (or Focus) setting in the Camera Control Window.
  • Page 22 The most common method for color filter imaging is to use a Luminance filter, and a Red, Green and Blue filter (LRGB). To better manage the use of multiple filters, a color filter wheel (available from Orion) is recom- mended.
  • Page 23 for Blue. The number of saved files will add up quickly, since four images are needed for one single color image. It is important to clearly label your folders when autosaving to ensure that you can easily follow which files belong to each image. Creating dedicated folder for each new deep sky image is highly recommended.
  • Page 24 Figure 14. To Combine Color, select which images will be designated as Luminance, Red, Green, and Blue. Figure 15. Each LRGB image must be aligned so they overlap before combining the color image. Narrowband Imaging The extra-high sensitivity of the SSDSMI-2 is also capable of capturing images through specialized narrow band filters.

  • Page 25: Image Processing

    Narrowband imaging is used by the most advanced astronomical telescope imaging systems, including the Hubble Space Telescope. The same method of RGB imaging can be applied to narrowband imaging.

  • Page 26: Color Balance

    The sensitivity of most CCD cameras as a function of wavelength (color) is dif- ferent from the response of the human eye. The filters used for creating color composites also have their own characteristics, as do the telescope optics. Although “perfect” color rendition is an elusive if not impossible goal (all indi- viduals see colors slightly differently), it is straightforward to get “good”...
  • Page 27 Note: Before any color balance adjustment can be made, you must first Combine Color to each individual LRGB or RGB images. Refer to “Combine Color”. Color images from CCD cameras typically require a background level adjust- ment. This is accomplished by bringing the background level (or bias) in each color plane down to zero.

  • Page 28: Recommended Processing Sequence

    than 1 will emphasize faint details, while a value greater than 1 will emphasize bright details. The Input Range can be set to Screen Stretch, which in Linear Mode pro- duces an output matching the current screen appearance. This is useful in producing final images for output to 8-bit image formats which have limited range.
  • Page 29 3. Combine 4. Filter 5. Combine Color 6. Color Balance 7. Stretch For convenience, you can Make Pixels Square after the combine, unless align- ment requires rotating the images (i.e. Manual 2 stars is used as the Align Mode in the Combine Images window). If you need to rotate the images by more than a small amount, then you should make them square first to avoid geometric distortion between the frames.

  • Page 30: Batch Process

    Batch Process Batch Process can be used to process multiple images simultaneously using the various commands available in MaxIm DL Essentials Edition. The first step is to select a set of images or files. Image files can be selected from disk using the Select Files button. You can browse to a location on the disk where your image files are located, and select a number of files.
  • Page 31 Keep in mind, however, that when the SSDSMI-2 is used in this way, you will need another telescope and camera (such as a DSLR or a second SSDSMI-2) on the mount to actually take images with; the SSDSMI-2 takes the place of the observer viewing through the guide scope, but cannot autoguide and image at the same time.

  • Page 32: Computer To Mount Connection

    10. Click OK in the ASCOM Telescope Chooser window. 11. In the Settings window, click the Close button. Some telescope mounts, such as the Orion Atlas EQ-G and Sirius EQ-G, uti- lize an “ST-4 compatible” autoguider jack. For easiest autoguiding with these mounts, we recommend purchasing the optional USB Guide Port interface (GPUSB).
  • Page 33 The autoguider Settings window is where the Autoguider Output is defined. Other telescope mounts accept commands in the “LX200 Protocol”. For these mounts, it is not necessary to install the ASCOM platform to have the com- puter “talk” to the mount. To setup the autoguider for mounts that use the LX200 Protocol: 1.

  • Page 34: Autoguider Calibration

    Autoguider Calibration In order to properly control the mount, you must calibrate the system. The exact orientation of the SSDSMI-2, the focal length of the guide telescope optics, and the speed of the motor drive all affect the calibration. To perform autoguider calibration: 1.
  • Page 35 7. Click Apply. You can leave this dialog box open, or Close it if you wish. 8. Make sure that the telescope mount is set to move at 1X sidereal or slower. For some mounts, you must set the guide rate manually. The maximum usable rate is 1X sidereal.
  • Page 36 You are now ready to take a long-exposure image through the main telescope and imaging camera. The SSDSMI-2 will continuously send small correction factors to the mount’s motor drive to insure steady and accurate tracking throughout the duration of the exposure, however long that may be.

  • Page 37: Other Features Of Maxim Dl Essentials

    Other Features Of Maxim DL Essentials Edit Menu Flip - Flips image orientation. “Folds” image about vertical center. Mirror – Creates mirror image of current image orientation. Crop – Lets you select an area of the total image, and then discards the remainder of the image.
  • Page 38 StarShoot Solar System Imager, not he SSDSMI-2. Tips Polar Alignment Good telescope mount polar alignment is of critical importance for long-expo- sure CCD imaging. Inaccurate polar alignment leads to image movement over time (even with motor drives running and engaged), which limits the amount of time an exposure can be taken before the stars begin to streak and blur.
  • Page 39 (zero degrees declina- tion). Point the telescope at this star, and center it in an illuminated reticle eyepiece (available from Orion). If you don’t have an illuminated reticle eyepiece, use your highest- magnification eyepiece.
  • Page 40 4. Now beneath the Mode selector, pick Focus, and then click Expose. The camera will take repeated exposures, until you click Stop. 5. Point the telescope at a bright star, and you can focus “by the numbers”: • MaxPixel is the value of the brightest pixel in the image. When you are in focus, it will be at its highest value.
  • Page 41 Filters Any standard Orion 1.25" filter will thread into the front of the SSDSMI-2’s barrel. For deep sky or planetary imaging with the SSDSMI-2, special dichroic color filters can be used to capture rich color definition when combined in MaxIm DL Essentials.

  • Page 42: Specifications

    We recommend purchasing a 10' USB extension cable if you need more cord length (available through Orion, check the catalog and/or www.OrionTelescopes.com). Care and Maintenance When the SSDSMI-2 is not in use, the cover cap should be replaced on the end of the nosepiece.
  • Page 43 This device complies with Part 15 of the FCC Rules. Operation is subject to the following two conditions: (1) this device nay not cause harmful interference, and (2) this device must accept any interference received, including interference that may cause undesired operation. Changes of modifications not expressly approved by the party responsible for compliance could void the user’s authority to operate the equipment.
  • Page 44 This warranty gives you specific legal rights, and you may also have other rights, which vary from state to state. For further warranty service information, contact: Customer Service Department, Orion Telescopes & Binoculars, P. O. Box 1815, Santa Cruz, CA 95061; (800) 676-1343. Orion Telescopes & Binoculars Post Office Box 1815, Santa Cruz, CA 95061...

This manual is also suitable for:

Starshoot deep space monochrome imager ii

Table of Contents