Vulcanoid Imaging Techniques

- Originally, this thread contained a message I posted earlier on march 10th 2006. (Subject: testpictures of zenith)
On april 4th, I accidentily wiped out the original message in this thread.
I hope Mr. Noll can restore this in future. -

regards
Harro Treur

Today I measured the field of view of the Canon EOS 20Da Red/almost-near-IR sensitive camera.  The field of view in the view finder was 4.035° ± 0.01° by 6.095° ± 0.01°.  The view finder field of view is smaller than the actual image size.  For example, my measurements showed that there is another 0.16° above and 0.06° below the view finder field making the total image height 4.246°.

This evening I performed some very preliminary imaging tests using the Canon EOS 20Da Red/almost-near-IR sensitive camera.  I was using a Canon EF 200mm f/2.8L II USM lens with a B+W 72mm Infracolor Orange-to-IR Filter, a filter blocks light above 520nm and fully lets in light from 600nm well into the near IR (beyond 1000 nm).  Early results were encouraging.

It is important to remember that to do a Vulcanoid search one needs to collect data.  The normal image post-processing that one might do to clean up an image for submission to a magazine such as Sky & Telescope should not be done on your only copy of the data.

Image cleanup alters data and in some cases removes information.  The information that you lose could be the Vulcanoids that you are looking for!  Use Photoshop / Paintshop in a copy of the data if you must, but preserve  your original image data for Vulcanoids analysis.

For those planning on taking Vulcanoid images with a digital camera remember this important tip: turn off noise reduction!

OK, besides removing the lens cap :) turning off any camera noise reduction is critical. That tiny speck that noise reduction may smooth out could have been a Vulcanoid!