Now I found that I could not see any diffraction spikes while looking at Vega and instead tuned to the lowest FWHM value which works just fine. If you have a Bahtinov mask then put it onto your scope now and tune for the diffraction spikes – you have to be absolutely spot on. Now you are aiming for the lowest FWHM value while adjusting the focus. I then pick a bright star – Vega is ideal to use if in view and use the slider in the image below while looking at the “zoomed” in portion to give you a good size star to observe. These windows I also use for star alignment after I have polar aligned – they are incredibly accurate – more so than the illuminated reticule eyepiece. Note: The two areas I have marked, the smaller one on the right is a zoomed in portion from the main window. Afterwards I have found it automatically turns itself on/off. IMPORTANT: The first time you use this, you must set your liveview on within the camera menu. If so you will have something similar to this …Īlso, select > Sub-folder window on the top left. Then change those hilighted areas above to what you would like (that is, if you should want to change them – it is all down to personal preference.) So, to change this then select the window top right and you will get a display similar to the image below.
Raw files might take a while to load unless you have other software such as Photo Mechanic. Thirdly, only raw files are kept – you might want to capture jpegs also so you can look through the images you have collected quicker and discard the crap ones. Secondly, the images are captured to laptop only by default (and none saved on the camera card) Now on startup the program has some defaults which I needed to change.įirstly, the default download folder needs to be in a better place for me.
The Dial Mode is set to MANUAL (yes keep it there) The ISO is set to 800 (make sure that the images and darks you take are all at the same iso) The battery is at 80% (this will reduce over time so keep an eye on it) There is also a Camera Information Center (mid screen) which you should check three important things. To the left it will confirm the type of camera and show this as detected.
On plugging into the USB the laptop will automatically load the required device driver and upon completion the camera will be detected and the following screen will be displayed. You now have to connect your camera to the USB of your laptop and then select the window on the top left side of the screen. The first screen that comes up will be this.
That is it, you are now the registered owner. On entering these several lines of code it will automatically populate your user information to the right hand side. Once you purchase the program (or even begin a free 30 day evaluation), on running for the first time you need to enter a key in a box. avi so we no longer need to perform that conversion and I am sure a lot more in addition. avi so other programs can process the data (.mov is rarely supported) – BackyardEOS captures in. Visiting the main website at Backyard EOS will provide a complete description of what this program does but for our intents and purposes, I will assume that we already know the basics – ie, that this is a program that enables our Canon cameras to be connected directly to the telescope allowing our laptop to image the stars, capture dark frames, assist with focus, enable drift aligning, planetary imaging – this is neat as our Canon cameras video defaults to. I also use this program for star alignment, focus and drift alignment. After reading this guide a newcomer should be armed with the basics to successfully capture and view images. This program is very powerful, has a fantastic support structure and a great forum.
The aim of this guide is to give a very basic overview of what BackyardEOS (BYEOS) does, how it does it and how to setup workflows. BackyardEOS – beginners very basic guide (functional but a work in progress)