Astroblog: First Images with Don

Thursday, May 10, 2007

First Images with Don

Finally after weeks of waiting, I got my first images with "Don", the 8" Newtonian I recently inherited.

You can see an image with my old Newtonian taken with the webcam on the left, and the image on the right is the same old webcam, but taken through "Don" (click to enlarge). Heaps more detail in the cloud bands. And it was a very poor seeing night, lots of turbulence and the scope dripping with dew.

I could have apid more attention to focusing, but I managed to knock the guide scope out of alignment, and was so releived to get Jupiter in view that I was lees concientious than I could have been. Also, the dec control on the hand piece seems to have given up the ghost. RA works fine, but it does make centring an object a trace harder.

That said, clock drives rock! Not having to spend half my night fighting to get Jupiter into the webcam field of view and then keep it there there makes observing that much nicer. So now I look forward to doing some nice timelapse imaging of Jupiter events, or maybe Vesta, who knows!

Labels: Astronomy, imaging, Jupiter, webcam

# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 11:48 pm

Comments:

You'll have to make an animation of the moons.

# posted by

Anonymous : 3:22 am

WOW!.I have spent many a night trying to get a real good image of Jupiter and have yet to capture a image with a quality that you have produced.Jupiter is rising ever earlier here in the US and soon I will be giving it another try.
Can't wait to see more images from Don!.
Clear skies!
Andrew

# posted by

Anonymous : 6:01 am

Stuart, oh yes, animations of the Moons is very high on my list. Especially when spurred on by your lovely example.

# posted by

Ian Musgrave : 7:01 am

Andrew, get Registax. I forgot to mention the image is a stack of 50 taken from the original AVI. Registax will change your life.
The seeing conditions were such that the stars danced around like molten blobs, so imagine what you can do with GOOD seeing conditions.

# posted by

Ian Musgrave : 7:05 am