Posts Made By: Laurence Citro

hi,

My wife and I had a great experience last night. We live in the country and get a lot of stuff delivered to us by Fed Ex. Yesterday afternoon he asked if I was observing last night. The ans was yes and he asked if he could bring his 7 year old daughter to look at Saturn.

Well it was wonderful. Andy & Olivia showed up at 8:45 PM and I had my Mewlon 250 ready. Olivia was a bit shy at first but then ... she warmed up and asked questions faster then I could answer them. She could name the planets in order from Mercury to Pluto. She knew Jupiter has lots of moons and a red spot and Saturn had lots of moons too. She knew an asteroid impact resulted in the demise of dinosaurs.

An amazing little girl, who was absolutely mesmerized by the views of Saturn at 120 and 300x. Her dad also was. We had a great time.

At the end of the evening I invited them back to look at Jupiter in June.

As they were leaving we were making small talk and I asked her what she wants to be when she grows up. She said "a brain surgeon". I think she'll do it.

clear skies,

Larry Citro

Hi,

Last years data reprocessed in MaximDl v 4 and Paintshop Pro

Mewlon 250 at f 9.1, Sbig St10xme, 180:30:30:30 minutes.

Full res image ...0.6 arc seconds per pixel.

clear skies,

Larry Citro

Hi,

When the moon is up I very often will use the standard red filter rather then a H alpha filter. This has the advantage of more light throughput and I can find a guid star while it's often impossible to find a guide star with the H alpha filter.

M1 60 mins exposure with 10 min subs, Takahashi Mewlon 250 at f9.1, ST10XME 1x1 binning. Processed in MaximDL v 4 and Paiantshop Pro.

clear skies,

Larry Citro

Hi,

This is an old image of the Bubble Nebula which I reprocessed in Photoshop vr 7. Takahashi Mewlon 250 at f9.1 SBIG ST10XME. LRGB 120:30:30:30 mins.

I used curves, levels, unsharpmasking and selective dodging and burning ( to clean up the gradients) using a seperate layer and the paintbrush using appropiate background and foreground colors using the color picker eyedropper.

clear skies,

Larry citro

Hi,

I used to have a 8" LX200, which is now sold and still working perfectly for the owner.

I kept it outside for three years covered by a tarp which was then covered by a desert storm cover lashed by bungee cords.

I kept a 7 watt bulb under the covers when not in use to avoid condensation. It was out during rain, sleet and snow. I experience no problems and had a 30 sec set up time.

I also did this with a Mountain Instruments MI 250 goto mount which was outside for 2 years and my Mewlon 250 which was kept out for weeks at a time.


Larry

hi,

Magnificent image.

Larry Citro

hi,

I use a Mewlon 250 for ccd imaging with a SBIG ST10XME. The scope is a great imaging platform. Very little coma is visable at the edges of the image and can be corrected with a coma corrector if this bothers you.

See my web site for some images.

http://www.starryforge.com

Larry Citro

hi,

Check out this ad http://www.astromart.com/classifieds/details.asp?classified_id=459957.

It's not mine but a great price for a complete set up. The class 3 chip will have a few more column defects then a class 2 chip.

Larry

Hi,

I have a Mewlon 250 mounted on a MI 250 goto. I use the ST10xme at present. I tried guiding with a guide scope and a STV. AT the FL of the 250 differential flexure became a huge problem and IMHO could not be solved short of custom mounting plates and rings.

Using the internal guiding of the ST10 I can get perfectly round stars at 3000 or 2400 mm FL.

clear skies,

Larry Citro

hi,

If you are going to buy a Losmandy G11 and a SBIG camera, I would suggest taking the 10" off the fork mount and mount it on the G11 using Losmandy dovetail plates. It would make a fine imaging system.

clear skies,
Larry