As some of you may be aware, there is a total lunar eclipse happening in roughly 10 hours, to be visible from North America. It is a little late for most of us on this continent to see it though as we'll be asleep.
http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/LEplot/LEplot2001/LE2014Apr15T.pdf
So I had this idea a couple weeks ago that if I could just find a PTZ camera that could be mounted outside, upside down, it would have a full view of the sky and I could command it to track the moon all night every night and capture images. It would automatically capture events such as this.
Seems like a lot of work for practically no gain. Eclipse pictures aren't hard to find in much better quality than you'd get from a PTZ camera. But I think it would be fun.
The problem is, most PTZ cameras seem to be designed such that they'd fill with water if they were mounted upside down. Even with rubber gaskets around all openings, water might pool, deposit debris, freeze, thaw, and eventually find its way in.
So I'm looking for a PTZ that can safely be mounted upside down. It could even be an indoor PTZ if it was small enough to fit in one of those 3rd party enclosures from Amazon, and I wouldn't feel bad about sealing the dome shut with silicone if it was just a $70 enclosure and not a $500+ camera that I was doing it to.
But in order to be useful it also would need accurate absolute positioning support (e.g. Dahua, Hikvision, and some Trendnet models) and high zoom; the moon is only half a degree in diameter, and a 30x camera has a view angle around 2.3 degrees while a 12x camera has a view angle around 4.6 degrees. I wouldn't want to try less than 12x.
Anyone know of a suitable camera?
http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/LEplot/LEplot2001/LE2014Apr15T.pdf
So I had this idea a couple weeks ago that if I could just find a PTZ camera that could be mounted outside, upside down, it would have a full view of the sky and I could command it to track the moon all night every night and capture images. It would automatically capture events such as this.
Seems like a lot of work for practically no gain. Eclipse pictures aren't hard to find in much better quality than you'd get from a PTZ camera. But I think it would be fun.
The problem is, most PTZ cameras seem to be designed such that they'd fill with water if they were mounted upside down. Even with rubber gaskets around all openings, water might pool, deposit debris, freeze, thaw, and eventually find its way in.
So I'm looking for a PTZ that can safely be mounted upside down. It could even be an indoor PTZ if it was small enough to fit in one of those 3rd party enclosures from Amazon, and I wouldn't feel bad about sealing the dome shut with silicone if it was just a $70 enclosure and not a $500+ camera that I was doing it to.
But in order to be useful it also would need accurate absolute positioning support (e.g. Dahua, Hikvision, and some Trendnet models) and high zoom; the moon is only half a degree in diameter, and a 30x camera has a view angle around 2.3 degrees while a 12x camera has a view angle around 4.6 degrees. I wouldn't want to try less than 12x.
Anyone know of a suitable camera?