Waiting for darkness

[brianb]

Set up my new CPC1100 last night & whilst waiting for it to go properly dark had a bit of fun imaging. The seeing was DIRE, really bad boiling, possibly in part due to the rapid fall in temperature and partly due to the scope not being fully cooled down ...

Anyway:
Moon, Ptolemaeus with floor mostly in shadow, 1931 UT


Moon, Hyginus/Triesnecker region, 1933 UT


Moon, Appennines region, 1934 UT


Saturn, 1937 UT


Images captured at prime focus (2800mm f/10), DMK41 monochrome web cam, stacks of 100/300 frames (Moon), 300/500 frames (Saturn)

I was going to do a colour version of Saturn but couldn't find my colour seperation filter set & ended up only taking the "luminance" image!

There is obviously potential here if the atmosphere ever settles down enough....

[Carl O Beirnes]

Hi Brian,

Congrats on a beautiful new scope it has a great focal length for planetary imaging. You must get yourself a X2 Powermate  it  increases your Image size greatly  http://www.telescopes.com/telescope-accessories/barlow-lenses/televue25xpowermate114inch.cfm .Then get yourself some bobs knobs they are fantastic for collimating your scope in seconds. this means you will not be putting a screwdriver near your corrector plate in the dark  http://www.bobsknobs.com/Celestron/SCT/C11met.htm  here is some info for you too http://sctscopes.net/SCT_Tips/Maintenance/Collimation/collimation.html. Sorry for throwing so much at you  but if you want to get great images 99.99% happens out at the scope and 00.01% is processing it's going to be a great time for you welcome to the world of planetary imaging. If you have any questions just give me a bell

Carl

[martinastro]

Great lunar captures there Brian. I didn't know what kind of scope that was so I looked it up...impressive instrument!. Bet you will have some fun with that. 

[brianb]

I didn't know what kind of scope that was so I looked it up...impressive instrument!. Bet you will have some fun with that.

Yeah, when the sky clears ... a lot of cloud was in the box. Anyway on the odd occasion it's been reasonably clear it's showing its potential, getting well into the 15s in not particularly good sky, even on Thursday/Friday with haze & Moon was just about getting to mag 15.

Reason for purchase, it's the largest aperture driven scope that I can handle physically. It's a great big lump but the handles are in just the right place ... the Meade 12" LX90 is actually lighter but nowhere near as easy to carry. Still coming to terms with the electronics - it's amazing how something with essentially the same functionality as the Meade can be so different to use, but I'm getting there.

Carl, I have a couple of barlows and am not a complete stranger to imaging through a SCT ... the atmosphere was just too turbulent on Thursday to even consider using a barlow, I'm actually surprised how well the imaging worked as the AVIs look horrible. The DMK camera is 4.65 micron pixel pitch so theoretically it needs to work at f/22 to make a proper 2x oversampled image.

BTW I upgraded to the new version of Registax (v5) which I think is an improvement in several ways.