How to make a simple all-sky camera

Re:How to make a simple all-sky camera by mszcz on Sunday April 05, 2020 @02:04PM (#22787198)

I've recently used na RPi4 with a ArduCam OV5647 camera and a LS-40180 Fish Eye CS mount to make a home security cam as a fun project. Works nice and has a 194 horizontal / 142 vertical FOV.

I wonder if that setup would work for something like this? Does anybody have experience using cheap RPi-like equipment for things like these? Am I correct in assuming that this wouldn't work because of the low sensitivity of the sensor in the cam (I know next to nothing about photography)?

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Re:How to make a simple all-sky camera by madaxe_again on Sunday April 05, 2020 @02:14PM (#22787273)

Your camera is your limiting factor here - at 5MP, and ¼”, you have some pretty small pixels. The dark current etc. is unspecified in the spec sheet. The lens is small. Together, that means low photons per pixel, and noise becomes dominant.

You would probably be able to image something, but you’d want a bigger sensor and lens ideally.

That said, you can still do plenty if you’re willing to set the thing up on an electronic equatorial mount (very cheap and cheerful would do for wide angle) and take many long exposures, and stack them - but the moment you try it with better gear you’ll be wishing you hadn’t bothered!

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Re:How to make a simple all-sky camera by mszcz on Sunday April 05, 2020 @02:22PM (#22787317)

Oh, ok. Assumed that this would be too good to be true. Thanks anyway! The equatorial mount would be nice but I thought more along the lines of making a one-off night sky time lapse video out of curiosity. I gotta stop buying hardware for one-off fun projects, so this will probaly remain a "some day, maybe" that never gets done ;)

I'm assuming the dark current is what the camera picks up even when it's 100% dark? Also, I would need a bigger lens so that I can capture more light right?

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