Posts Made By: Paul Maxson

Tyler Allred said:

At last... a night with clear skies and relatively steady viewing conditions. I went for Saturn at f/40 tonight with the Ultima 2000 8" SCT. Here is a stack of 3019 frames from an AVI taken with a Toucam 840. This is the recorded image scale.... with no enlarging. I think it is my best Saturn image to date. Steady seeing makes me happy!!!
Cheers
Tyler

Ivan Gastaldo said:

Quick question to my fellow refractor gurus...
As I was trying to test my newly acquired ED80, I tried to set up my DSI camera on it, without a diagonal, and found out that I cannot reach focus. (focuser tube too short, looks like needs an extension)

If any of you have found this problem, could you tell me how did you fix it? did you buy/made an extension for your tube?


Thank you for your attention, and clear skies! 8)

Mike Wirths said:

Hi all,

Well it was clear tonight but the seeing went south soon after dark and by the time I had everything set to go it was a solid 4-5/10 seeing. The only thing that salvaged the videos to some degree was the IR passband filter (I suspect the better the seeing gets the less they are needed and with really good seeing are probably a hinderence). I also dropped back to just a 3X's barlow.
The ray structure around Messier did turn out nicely.
Stack of about 250/1200
18" Starmaster

--Mike W

Mike Wirths said:

Hi,

I did a quick comparison shot of the Rheita valley a few nights back during fairly poor seeing. I shot one video with a Schular 850nm passband filter and then quickly took it out and shot another one without. here is the comparison, the image on the right (the really crappy one)was shot without, I had trouble even getting a proper alignment because the frames were so distorted, the one on the left was with the filter and its not half bad. I'm pretty sold on IR passband filters, the only drawback is they eat up a lot of light, at least the Schular one does, I ordered the Baader 670 a while back I'll let you know which one seems better!

cheers

Mike Wirths

Paul Maxson said:

Hi all,

Well with all the clouds, it's hard to find anything exciting in the sky. Yesterday I got the two filters I had ordered, a UV Venus filter (300-400nm) and a long pass red filter (610nm). The UV filter is DENSE!! I could not see anything through it from lights in the house. Probably a good thing as I don't think having a lot of UV floating around is a good thing anyway. I'm anxious to try it out on Venus and other objects when the sky clears (sic). The red filter on the other hand...very, very light and well....actually it was invisible!! I opened the box to find the spec sheet but no filter. I'm certain the company will send it to me, but all I could think of was that I was glad it was cloudy and I can't use it soon. At least because of that I could chuckle and not cry!!

Paul

Edward Roach said:

Hi all,

I've been having poor seeing conditions the last two weeks and they are still here. But during one of the avi's I took on Feb. 15 the seeing steadied enough to process a usable image, at least for me. It's not the best image, but it's all I have.

Meade LX90 8" SCT @ f/35
Phillps ToUcam Pro 840
Seeing 4/10
Transparency 3/5
Image taken at 4:11 UT on Feb. 16, 2005
477/2251 frames

Clear skies,

Ed Roach

Tyler Allred said:

Here is a quick shot of Saturn from the other night. This was taken the same night as the f/40 shots I posted earlier, but this one was taken at f/25 instead. I just got around to processing the avi file.
Cheers,
Tyler

Ultima 2000 - Toucam Pro 840 - TeleVue 2.5X Powermate
approx. 1600/3700 frames