Posts Made By: George Hall

Here is a link to an image of Jupiter that I made from my Driveway in Dallas on Friday night. Seeing was good, but not the best.

http://homepage.mac.com/joanlvh/Astronomy/Jupiter27Feb2004.html

Thanks,
George

Hi,

Sorry to respond to this thread so late but I use a ToUcam to collimate my 12" LX200GPS frequently. I stand on a ladder with the LX200 hand controller in one hand and the other hand on the collimation knobs. On the recomendation of a friend, I make small collimation adjustments that do not drive the out of focus star image off of the display. I then use the hand control to recenter the star image. I also have never seen a airy disk. I collimate until I have centered the bright dot at the center of the out of focus star image. I have a difficult time determining when that has occurred, but I take my best guess. I am tempted to develop a tool that provides an overlay of a circle with a centered dot to help in this process. I move my scope in and out of the garage on wheeley-bars. I find that I must collimate each time that I roll the scope out because the driveway seems to be sufficiently rough to disrupt the collimation. I believe that the process that I am following is adequate because I have been successful at imaging the Encke Gap on several occasions following this process. Excellent seeing is also required. Here is a link to one of these images.
http://homepage.mac.com/joanlvh/Astronomy/SaturnHR.html

Merry Christmas
George

Wes,

Great shot, THe view of Io transiting with the GRS makes for a great image. I must have had better luck with the seeing than you did. I did not have to resort to hand picking. The CSC is a great tool, but not 100% perfect.

George

Great collage Allen, I beleive that you image looks a little less noisy and has more detail than my image. Jose, I imaged Mars at F50 last summer. If the opportunity presents itself in the next few weeks I will try F50 on one of Jupiter's moons.

George

Gary,

Great shot! I thought that it would be good seeing.

George