CraigT82

Very nice Neil, shows it’s worth getting out there if you can, even if only for one capture. What makes you choose the celestron ultimate barlow over the Baader Q? Just a bit less power?

Did you need more outwards focus or inwards focus? Assuming outwards like with a newt when focusing on close objects so you can use an extension tube or similar

If going with a proper planetary camera you will need to budget for a laptop to run it and store the images. You will need USB3 connections and also SSD storage to get the best from the camera. I use a Lenovo thinkpad which I picked up for around £150 from ebay IIRC.

Nice shot, tons of detail there, la Palma clearly has it’s atmospheric benefits! More frames in the stack would help with the noise, have you tried winjupos at all? It’s a game changer for Jupiter imaging

Because it’s a bmp I think, try jpg or png

Very nice image Geof, It’s slowly climbing higher, 26degs next year. Will probably be the year after before I can get a scope on it though due to trees at the bottom of my garden. Nice to watch the rings closing as you say.

Lovely! Don’t see enough pic is this crater

Very nice, love it at this phase

Haha thanks Alan… It’s usually the case that no matter how many times you pour over the data the first quick process you did is the best!

Here is a middle ground, 50/50 blend of the first two in Gimp And here are first two for reference.

Nice images, loads of surface detail coming through now. As you say the dust storm seems to be shrinking or maybe it’s migrated over to the other side and we will see it in the other hemisphere? The red feature you mention is a plain which contains Candor Chasma, a large part of the Valles Marineris. You can see it well in this one from last opposition:

It worked! Free advertising

Nice work. Mars is a beaut, best I’ve seen so far I think

Thanks Alan appreciate the honesty! I think a 20% stack might be perfect but I can’t face going through the whole process again, might just overlay one on the other in gimp and combine these two

Nice work bet John Rogers was pleased to get those.

Had a reprocess of this data on my lunchbreak today, this time used only 10% of frames rather than the 40% of the original posted image. I think it's an improvement: a bit less 'wispy' for want of a better word. Top new, bottom old

Nice that's definitely got potential, just gotta catch a period of good seeing and you'll be laughing. Yes I use winjupos it's a godsend really, it's pretty easy really, the key is to get nice sharp images to feed into it as they are much easier to measure with the outline frame.

That’s really nice, sharp as a tack 👍🏼

That’s a conical mirror, cast glass with reduced thickness at the edges and ribs for stiffness and reduced weight. Held in place by the central bolt at the back as you say.

I feel your pain with this one I have had two old scopes recently which were otherwise superb scopes let down by rusty old 1.25” focusers. I think the chances of you fitting a new focuser without having to drill the tube are close to zero unfortunately. You may be able to fit a focus motor to it if you could fabricate a custom bracket, but then you’d still have to deal with backlash in the rack and pinion (if it’s there?)

Very nice yes seems to be some surface details on Ganymede, great work with an 8” manual dob

That’s a beaut Neil the detail is excellent and pretty smooth too was this 6 minutes? You know I’m not sure you’re going to gain much by going to a mass produced 12” scope over your 10” with high quality mirrors

Definitely a halo but looks actually quite attractive to me as far as halos go, though I do like the glare of the unfiltered sub even more. A 5 min sub of Vega is a hell of a test for any optical element

Thanks Geof 👍🏼

Thanks Tristan, I doubt in another league TBH your Mars images from 2020 were pretty awesome not to mention your deep sky and solar work with the 250PDS! Just lucky I had decent seeing really and was able to get out there, that's half the battle with planetary just being in the right place at the right time