My first Uranus capture

I normally post over on cloudynights.com but I thought I'd pop in here and post up my image of Uranus captured last night.

Most of the guys know me on Cloudynights as one of the Dob imagers, I have no tracking ability. I just point the scope in front of the planet I am imaging, and let the planet fall through the Field Of View as I record with the ToUcam. I use a Celestron 2x Barlow lens removed from the Barlow tube, and screwed into the ToUcam's Mogg adapter, I then stick this into the Celestron Ultima 2x Barlow. I figure that It is anywhere between 3x - 3.3x based on many peoples thoughts that the Ultima Barlow is really a 2.3x Barlow.

Needless to say, I am very happy with my first image of Uranus. Now, if only I could capture Neptune and perhaps Mercury I would have all of the Major planets captured without tracking! Then I could move on to imaging with an EQ table like Mike Salway.

Attached Image:

Hi Brad,

A good image for your set up. Have you checked out the ALPO Japan website there are quite a lot of Uranus images being posted there recently. There are not too many unguided Dob imagers. My set up similar, but I use a Sony handicam aimed down the eye piece. I have a ToUcam still in the box unused and an equatorial platform under construction. One day soon I will finish it. Mike Salway started out same as you and he's doing some nice work now with a DMK camera on equatorial platform. It would be nice to see your completed set of planets.

Mike Ashburn

Wow! It's surpisingly good for an unguided image.. thanks for sharing... KMM

Brad, you must have incredible patience! Just to be able to get Uranus in a Toucam field of view at 500x without a clock drive is remarkable, let alone imaging it for several minutes. Nice shot. I wish I had your level of patience, thanks for posting

Regards,
Steve