I had a really nice evening last night. I set up the Skymax and HEQ5 combo allowing it to cool for an hour or two before going out.

I ate dinner, played Star Wars Lego with my lad and put him to bed. Just before 9pm I ventured outside with the laptop to find everything covered in ice already. Connected all the leads to the PC - confirmed that the new lead that Roger gave me worked ok (it does - cheers Roger!) and started to image the moon.

I've imaged the moon many times before but one of the settings in the IC Capture software that I never altered was the "Gamma", having no real idea what it did, I left it well alone. Someone asked me a while back what the Gamma was set too....

So I thought that as I wasn't rushed by clouds, the moon setting or guilt (family wondering if I'd left them and moved in with the telescope) I decided to throw caution to the wind and have a really good experiment.

All I can say is WOW, I wish I'd found this setting a long time ago. It does have an affect near the terminator, but the terminator I can usually image OK. Where the Gamma has a massive effect is the rest of the lunar surface. In the past my lunar shots have been quite sharp on the terminator but really flat and bland and generally rubbush else where.

Not any more, almost immediately the craters appeared 3D (like they should I guess), so the further I moved away from the terminator the lower the Gamma was set.

So the moral of the story for me is to try more stuff, do not just continue to do stuff because it works OK - you want it to work great.

A slight downer for the evening was looking at Saturn. It was nearly midnight by this time and I was cold, but I just couldn't seem to get Saturn anything other than a blob.

I could see on the laptop screen the edge on rings, so I guess focus was close (should have been as I focused on the moon and just swung the scope around), but none of the settings, gain/brightness/gamma /exposure, made any improvement to the image in the screen.

Not sure what I did wrong, but I'll give it another go another night.

I really should have put in an eyepeice and looked at Saturn!

Ant