Posts Made By: Eddie Casey

Here's a shot of the conjunction presently on show. It's a quick digicam job but serves to show how the five planets look at sunset.


Eddie.

Try this link, its contains a lot of info regarding Messier, his equipment and observing. I personally don't know how much mythology has grown up over the years. There are so many anomolies in the list to render it open to sceptism, M45 for example. How could that possibly be included? Its a very interesting thread though.

Hope this is of some help.

http://www.seds.org/messier/xtra/history/CMessier.html

Cheers, Eddie.

Its amazing whats happening at Meade at the moment don't you all think? I have a UK astronomy magazine infront of me from a couple of months ago, theres the usual seductive image of the 12" LX200GPS. The 'GPS' part is touted as the next big thing, which in truth is right, as we always lag our stateside observing friends. Now jumping forward to this months edition, lo and behold, introducing the all new 14" LX200GPS with UHTC! The amazing part is that it retails at the SAME price as the 12" only a couple of months earlier! Now that must leave an awful lot of bitter pills to swallow for those who bought their scopes only a short while ago. I don't know if this has been the case in the US but I thought I'd relate this for you all.

Cheers, Eddie.

Here's a pic of a small Tasco goto newt. This beast is far from cheap, also check out the mount. Looks very 'nexstar' don't you think? This goto revolution has a lot to answer for!

Now that the gas giants are returning for another superb placing I wondered what views everyone had on filters. I'm talking specifically coloured filters. I have always intended to buy coloured filters but somehow have never gotten round to it. It would appear that most coloured filters help in some way with contrast whether they be red or blue. What do the experienced planetary guys swear by? What manufacturers do you use, or are coloured filters less 'optically dependant'.

Cheers, Eddie.

Don,t know if everyone has seen this but it represents the best image ever of the moon from Earth. That is the claim of the article anyway. Its said to show detail to an astonishing 0.07" or 130 metres in N-S around the apollo 11 landing site. Not quite sufficient to dispel the hoaxers unfortunatly!c Its taken with the ESO's Very large telescope. The link at the botom is the full article.

http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0208/12taruntius/

Hi all, I have just gotten hold of the meade 9mm illuminated EP. It was a
steal so bought it. Its the corded version which would normally be
fed from the LX200 base. I have just read that someone managed to
blow the LEDs by using the AUX output on an LX50. I intend to run it
using a battery set-up on any portable scope. Anyone out
there use this thing like this or could pass on the electrical spec,
voltage/current requirements. Would be much in your debt!

Cheers, Eddie.

Heres our innermost little friend about 10 minutes ago. Pretty poor I know, its a digicam shot of the projected image from a set of 20x80 binos for gods sake!!!!!!

Hi all, I've been playing around with the toucam pro and basically capturing files I think 'look OK' on the laptop. I'm not employing any science regarding settings being rather new to the webcam brigade. In looking through a few sites on the subject I have come across an interesting fact. Apparently the optimum frame rate is 5 fps according to the guy who wrote the software K3CDDtools. Higher frame rates force the capture to default to lower resolutions even though the 640x480 resolution is selected. Too high a frame rate will mean the results are interpolated. I must admit I would try to get as high a frame rate as possible which logic would suggest this is the way to go. Using these facts it would appear a lower frame rate is desirable to ensure the individual captured frames are as representative and uncompressed as possible. I would welcome views on this as most posted images do not generally give this parameter.

Hi all, just wondered how you guys with the webcams choose images from your avis. Apparently there is software that automatically pulls out 'good frames' from a sequence. It can be a real pain sorting through several hundred frames. Someone mentioned 'Iris' on their website.

Thanks in advance.