Posts Made By: Gianluca Valentini

Really impressive and extremely interesting: thanks Roland.

Ciao
Luca

Very nice image! Which camera did you use?

Ciao
Luca

Hello Greg,

nice work, but I believe you had some serious guiding problems that jeopardized an otherwise interesting picture: were you imaging with the scope in alt-az or equatorial mode? Many stars have a "ghost" (or more than one) which seems to me an image aligning problem. Some stars (top right side at approx 3/4 of the picture) have Mickey Mouse's ears which is another guiding problem (similar errors are explained on page 192-3 of Wodaski's New CCD Astronomy). If you were in alt-az mode I believe that 60 secs is probably more than your mount can take, even considering the very short focal length. However, not many mounts in my experience can take that, i.e. 60 secs unguided exposures. If you were guiding this exposure, then the problem is in the guider.

I do not mean to "spoil the party" Greg and I hope you accept and appreciate comments. It is one of the reasons why I sometime post my images here: to seek approval and advice. The little progress I can say I made I owe it largely to the people of this forum and to the above mentioned Wodaski's manual.

Ciao Greg and keep it up!

Luca

Hello Mike,

what you describe is the only way to focus a Toucam, i.e. by screwing/unscrewing the lens. Once on the scope, you'll use the scope's focuser to achieve focus and all the problems of fiddling with the lens will be forgotten. I screw back the lens on the camera (740) only to seal the CCD from dust.

Ciao and have fun.

Luca

Great image Tyler!
I don't know if they show up only on my screen (LCD) but I see that the planet itself (the globe, I mean) shows some concentric rings and a brighter center. I had the same thing happening to me in a whole batch of Jupiter avis and resulting images. They told me it has to do with the gain settings which were probably too low. Just a suggestion for future reference.

Ciao
Luca

Hello Scott,

I have a Stiletto focuser for my Fuji S2 and I'm very happy with it. I also have DSLRFOCUS, but I still prefer the Stiletto procedure. In my area seeing is always a problem and the readings of the FWHM are very much affected by this. The Stiletto helps to achieve focus independently of seeing conditions and, once you have acquired a little practice, it is a very quick way. The only tricky bit is that you have to pay attention when you replace the Stiletto with the camera: you will use a T-ring and you must be careful not to rotate or move the ring while replacing as this will affect the CCD distance from focal plane and hence the focus. I was worried about this part, but practically never had a problem performing it.

My personal opinion: hope it helps.

Ciao
Luca

Hello Maurice,

in my opinion Astroart 3.0 is just as good as the 2 softwares you mentioned and probably less expensive(I know directly only Maxim. Mira I read about on Ron Wodaski's book). May not be as fancy looking, but it is easy and very powerful both in image acquisition and processing.

Ciao
Luca

Thank you very much guys. However, I forgot to mention my equipment:
Nexstar 11 GPS on an APT wedge on permanent pier (still setting it up, as you may guess).

I did both the alignment, i.e. the "meridian close to equator star" and the "low in the eastern horizon" (actually west, since I'm blocked to the east, but I just reversed the "too high/too low" instructions) and checked for declination drift. So the procedure is complete.

Thanks for all the useful hints (weight balance; worm gear problems; PE; etc.) I will check them all and let you know on this same thread if and how I solved the problem. I want to calculate the FOV to clock the movement, that seemed to be only to the east.

However, now that I have learned it is a fairly easy procedure and I can't wait to see its results: It is much scarier on paper than in actual practice.
Needless to say, as soon as I was finished last night, clouds rolled in and today it looks grim (windy and cloudy). Patience is key, but I'm lousy at it!

Ciao and thanks again for your help.

Luca

Hello again guys,
as promised I give you an update on the result of my polar alignment.

I went back and refined the process bearing in mind your suggestions.
The result is that now I can track a star (meridian/equator) at 560X for more than 12 minutes without any declination drift at all.

Only still a little RA drift but, I believe it is negligible since, after the 12 minutes, the star had moved from the center of the reticle only about a diameter to the west and, at 560X, I believe that is acceptable for my purpose.

I wish to thank you all again for your help and support.

Ciao Luca

Special thanks to Paolo who explained it to me in Italian and with an easy example.

Very nice Edward! Thanks for sharing it.

Ciao
Luca