Space/Sky Camera

[jonnysteele]

So I have an extra 4k bullet camera IP8M-2597EW, and I've always wanted to be able to have a camera just pointed up in the sky. We have a lot of military planes that do testing flights over out home, plus just to capture weather and maybe some aliens lol.

My question is, what would be the best settings to capture such events, both day and night? Obviously I would have to make a day and night profile as I would need longer exposure for night, just curious if anyone has tried this before.

[Revo2Maxx]

I have 3 Sky Cameras and to be honest they are not my 4K cameras and while I used to record them 24/7 there was never much that I could get at night.. Then just as you said this I look and out of my 2 dome cameras both 3mp my Amcrest Camera with normal lens can see the very small speck of the flashing lights of a Jet going by lol... My old 2014 3mp Dauha Zoom lens camera didn't even see it lol..

So for me I turned off the IR for both cameras While I do have Motion set for night time I don't get much in the PURE darkness of night.. There are some nights that I get some nice Moon LIght and some nice clouds... See some birds and my main push for the camears in space was to try and get falling stars or lightning seeing it likes to do that alot lol... 1 thing you need to know if it rains there a lot as it does here you might want to use some Cleaner that helps repeal the rain or your lens will just have cool effect of looking though water drops lol... Also seeing your camera is a bullet you will need to make sure you have slight pitch or it will just pool up with water over the lens...

So they have Rain-x I don't use that have another cleaner called Invisible Glass, Clean and Repel it is made by Stoner... Now my cameras are Glass domes so if yours isn't glass I would look to see if that would be a issue I do use on another camera that isn't glass and I have not scratched it or left any marks just wanted to make sure that while I do use it without an issue might not be safe for all camera lens covers...

Sadly they are not High Speed cameras so the Lightning is just way to fast to get a nice clear picture even when slowing it down lol...

Here is tonights view lol... 3mpZoom is my Dauha Camera it is older then my 3mpdome by Amcrest so the Amcrest has better sensor in it there are clouds there really Right click the image and say open in new tab for better view of the picture

Screenshot (2548).png (700.87 KiB) Viewed 1098 times

[longedge]

I use snapshots taken a few times each day at irregular intervals in my weather station web page just to add a little context to the bare statistics. I haven't posted a link as I don't have enough bandwidth for a lot of traffic, it's limited space with my ISP account.

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I've got a camera facing out of an upstairs window at the sky. The only changes that I made to the default settings were to switch off the IR illumination. Night time shots are usually a waste of time except when there's a relatively clear sky and a full moon.

Apart from snapshots, I've also played around with timelapse such as this one on YouTube https://youtu.be/XRPsrh7UblA a while back.

There are drawbacks, I don't think you'll ever get good images of fast moving objects but it's fun trying out different ways of using cameras.

[Revo2Maxx]

So seeing I only adding 2 cameras I took 2 images and added them together to save on pictures loaded... I took just a picture from now with my Zoom camera at normal and then the bottom pictures is the 2 same cameras just taken after I zoomed in the 3mp Dahua Zoom camera..

Even day time you can see the Amcrest is clearly a better quality sensor and lens even though it is Fixed.. I wish I could take the Dauha lens and add to Amcrest Camera and I could I would just need to make a control box and pipe out some more wires so I haven't made that change lol.. I did make a Control box that would work with the lens seeing I have another Pelco lens that needed a control box for that 20x lens to work... Sorry off topic lol..

Right click and pick open in new tab for full 1080p view

Screenshot (2549).png (2.25 MiB) Viewed 1023 times

[Revo2Maxx]

This is from one of my 1080P POE cameras.. It is not a great quality camera no matter what System I put it on so I have had it on both of my Amcrest NVR's, my 960h Amcrest machine in IP mode, my 7204 on a IP ch and I put on my 5208 Dahua and left it there for the sake of adding 2 IP cameras to the system that I have setup for just capturing my Driveway and 1 of my Cameras in my Garage. I didn't look at the setup for the camera but I am sure I turned off the IR as well. The little White dots is do to low quality sensor of the camera.. Not all cameras are Created equal... But what do I expect for a Free Camera anyway lol.. Won it at a Camera show some 8 years or so ago lol

Screenshot (2554).png (312.71 KiB) Viewed 979 times

[jonnysteele]

Thanks everyone. I'm going to see about getting it installed this weekend, I'll post up some shots when I get it running. Also I have a can of spray teflon, wonder if that will help with rain runoff

[jack7]

jonnysteele, Your post inspired me to do a test.
I put an extra IP4M-1026 outside pointed at zenith. It doesn't have good low light capability. I believe your 2597 does, as well as my 2MP starlight cams. So those cams should do better at night.

20200808_154208zenithcrop.jpg (58.91 KiB) Viewed 927 times

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I had the 1026 recording constantly yesterday. I changed the cam settings for Exposure to Manual, 1/3 sec exposure time, gain set to 100 and later to 75 which reduced noise. IR was turned off. Here's a six hour video played in a couple of minutes. I changed gain setting to 75 near the end. North is up, West is left. Towards the end you can see the stars moving west to east over time.
https://youtu.be/haKdKj89FJQ
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Here's a clip showing an airplane with pulsating light. It starts upper left at about 15 seconds in.
https://youtu.be/DNbRPd9D3Ug
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Here's a snapshot that shows stars. The brightest star is Vega and the bright one down to left is Altair. Camera was pointed at zenith because that's where the cam will receive most light from far away objects (less air between cam and object).

20200808231710.jpg (691.08 KiB) Viewed 927 times

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I really enjoyed doing this test. I did a lot of astro CCD imaging with telecopes about 15 years ago.

[Revo2Maxx]

Just remember you can set a Profile for your Day and Night for the OP.. This way when you make changes to your Night Profile you can setup a Time you want for your day Profile to kick in... So while I was working with mine always in day Mode and full time Color I did setup my two 3mp cameras to run on a Schedule.. However I can tell you that I don't live in an area that I can ever get that nice looking of a sky lol

However I wonder what I could see with my 20x Pelco lens? I have not ever tried it on my 3mp Box Samsung camera or my 12mp Dahua seeing it predates the Tech by good many years. I know the 12mp camera is junk at night..

Maybe I put it out on a night that it isn't Humid or raining out and a couple of my 37x cameras that are 10 years old on max zoom and see what I can see at night.. Sadly like I said not much for a nice looking sky in my area

[jack7]

Check to see if your camera no-plugin Web UI has the Day/Night option in Profile Management. It's in the IP8M-2597E user manual. It automatically changes camera to day or night profile when camera changes between day and night modes. No schedule is needed unless you don't like the camera's mode changing times.
There's also a camera API command that can be used if Web UI does not have Day/Night option.

[Revo2Maxx]

Mine has Day night as well I just was offering the Day night as an option to be able to make adjustments to the Shutter Speeds and things like that, that might affect the way the day time looks.. Anyway I deleted this text above and added a Small video to the text you can see it below.. Didn't want to just add a video and it was to long since I posted to just edit the post and add it.. In this video it is made with Screen shots but shows why I said it would be good to use Schedules if you change your Shutter speeds and make changes While I did an extreme for me to know by 1 hour there is about 15 min that it is to bright even for my Amcrest 3mp camera using the night time settings before it switches over.. For the 3mp Zoom I left it for an hour just so I had an idea when setup to where I should make that change from Night To day... Just some ideas....



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZQOqav ... e=youtu.be