UVC webcam exposure under Mac OS X

Apple's Mac OS X includes drivers for USB Video Device Class (UVC) cameras, which means that most webcams, including  the Xbox Live Vision, are just plug and play without needing to install any specialist drivers. However, the Apple provided webcam software Photo Booth doesn't allow any control over things like the exposure, gain, or frames per second (FPS), which are quite important in astrophotography. And it only captured at 640 × 426 pixels. So what can we do about this?

Xbox 360 WebCam IR filter

My first blog post was about mounting the Xbox Live Vision camera on a telescope for astrophotography. Last night I removed the built in red glass filter, which makes the webcam much more light sensitive - especially for infra-red (IR). I actually bought a second Xbox 360 camera for this experiment, so I can show photos with and without this modification.

Mains power for multi-speed EQ2 motor

Thus far I've been using my telescope just outside the house, or sometimes indoors when it has been very windy. This means rather than wasting batteries to drive the multi-speed EQ2 motor (and batteries don't tend to last very well in cold weather either), I thought I should look into a mains adapter.

Inside the EQ2 motor controller

I decided to open the control box for my SkyWatcher telescope's EQ2 mount multi-speed motor. Other than curiosity and to see how you might fine tune the speed, my main goal was to check the 6V power supply polarity in order to connect a mains adapter.

Multi-speed motor for SkyWatcher EQ2 mount

After trying the single speed simple economy EQ2 motor with my SkyWatcher telescope, I decided to upgrade to the multi-speed version which I think is much nicer to use and definitely worth the extra money.