johnturley

5 hours ago, Cosmic Geoff said:

 

If you are using Sharpcap 4, the ROI settings are in a menu to the right of the screen.  I use 320x240 on Jupiter, but with smaller pixels you may go for 480x480 or whatever your camera offers.

You may find that your C9.25 CPC is the best scope for planetary imaging. (You do not need an equatorial mount). Your 14" may not offer any practical advantage in British seeing conditions even if you get a cable to reach.   

Best focal ratio is said to be around f20 (including Barlow or Powermate) but in typical seeing f10 is enough.

Did you use an IR-cut filter with the ASI462MC, to get a correct colour balance?  It has a massive IR response, and I encourage you to get an IR-pass filter in addition and try that as well, shooting an IR image.  (With an ASI224MC this works well on Saturn and Mars).

I do have Sharpcap (and have recently downloaded the 4.0 version), as I find it more user friendly than the ZWO ASi software.

I will probably do most of my planetary imaging with the Esprit 150 for the following reasons:-

1. It is situated in my observatory shed, piggybacked on the fork mounted 14 in Newtonian, and there is a convenient shelf on which I can place my laptop when imaging.

2. The Esprit gives sharper planetary images most of the time than the 14in Newtonian, only under very good viewing conditions can it equal or exceed the Esprit regarding planetary images.

3. I have the Esprit and Newtonian almost perfectly aligned with each other, so I can connect up the ZWO camera to the Esprit, and then use the Newtonian to position the image through the Esprit onto the laptop screen, which saves a lot of time. 

4. With the focusing mount of the Esprit being situated close to the forks of the equatorial mount, the position does not vary a lot with altitude and azimuth when it is pointing in a south-east, south, or south-west direction, unlike if it was mounted on a German equatorial mount.

I do have a Baader Neodymium (IR cut) filter, although I haven't tried it for planetary imaging so far (just used it for visual) so maybe I should give it a try.

John 

16 minutes ago, Cosmic Geoff said:

Yes, the image is small, but what exactly did you do? Which of the telescopes in your signature did you use?  Did you take a one-shot, or a video for 'lucky image' processing?  Did you use the whole chip, or confine the region of interest? There is no point in using bandwidth to record a lot of black sky.

The image was taken through my Esprit 150, as due to the position of the eyepiece, I can't readily couple up a CMOS camera and laptop to the 14 in (would need a very long USB cable).

The image I have posted showing the shadow of Io was taken from a video, with the images stacked and processed in Registax, I may also have done a bit of fine tuning with Adobe Lightroom.

I wasn't aware that you can just use a region of interest rather than the whole chip with the ZWO camera, I will have to look into that, the instructions that came with it (actually only available online) were pretty rubbish.

John 

I purchased an a ZWO ASI 462 MC, which is supposed to be an improved version of the 224 MC (I assume that it utilises the same Sony chip as the QHY5III462C).

My first results on Jupiter were not that successful, as the image scale was far too small, and I couldn't enlarge it sufficiently in processing (see attached image). I tried eyepiece projection, but the results were not that great, however have recently purchased a Tele Vue 5x Powermate, with which I am hoping to get better results. 

Jupiter with Io shaow transit 29.08.21..bmp

6 hours ago, Mandy D said:

 

So, I am doomed to cloudy skies for weeks, now! I guess it must also apply to the seller of used equipment, too, so we're both in for cloudy skies! 😂

Derbyshire in particular seems to be suffering from cloudy skies at the moment, based on some posts things appear to be a bit better in Somerset

Excellent Jupiter, and Mars not bad considering the tiny 8 arc seconds disc.

You did well to get some clear skies in Derby, I've not had a clear night in Dronfield for over 2 weeks.

John 

1 hour ago, Barry-W-Fenner said:

Great pic!

I managed to locate Saturn once while still light. I knew its rough location and was waiting for dark to observe. I was shocked at how much detail was visible.

I have often wondered about viewing planets in the day time but imagine it would be a very hard task!

 

Mercury and Venus are best viewed in daylight, locating Mercury in particular during daylight can be difficult, especially when the magnitude is fainter than zero.

I use old fashioned setting circles in conjunction with a sidereal clock to locate. Although I do have an actual sidereal clock, I actually use an app on my phone now to obtain sidereal time rather than the clock, as it is more accurate. 

This method does however require a well aligned equatorial mount, and accurate setting circles. 

John    

14 minutes ago, Xgaze said:

First time out for ages this morning.
Took my 150m Dob. camping on Saturday, only early this morning was it clear enough.
I got up at first light and saw Jupiter as conspicuous as could be! got the scope out of the trailer, not sure if it had time to cool or not!?s et up really quick, collimation not even checked! 
Amazing views of our largest planet, two moons each side pricked out of the dimly lit sky.
I was able to clearly make out the banding and, I think I was able to make out the GSP? Checking on Stellerium, I think it is visible at the moment?

A joy to see when conditions are as good as they were just before dawn. 
I think I read somewhere that, viewing the planets is actually better at dusk or dawn - seems to be true!

Clear Skies!
 

T

 

Somerset clearly seems to be blessed with a lot more clear skies at night than further north, in Derbyshire I've not had a clear sky at night for over 2 weeks.

Arrived yesterday from FLO a Tele Vue 5x Powermate.

I am hoping that coupled with my ZWO ASI 462 Planetary Camera, and my Esprit 150, I will be able to obtain some reasonably sized decent images of Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars this summer and autumn.

My first attempts with the ZWO camera were not that great, on its own the images were far too small, and trying eyepiece projection was not that successful.

John

1 hour ago, Giles_B said:

@Zeta Reticulan I've read about using a neodymium filter - I guess this is the same thing as the contrast filter? I've also invested in some coloured filters so I'll have a play soon. I'm on holiday with my 130mm Newtonian, and have clear skies coming up - although the reduced aperture will surely mean i don't have any revelationary connection with Mars, I think I'm going to continue my journey!

@A Scanner_darkly Yes, the absent cassini gap worries me too. I'm pretty sure the scope is well collimated and, while I'm not obsessively cleaning my eyepieces, I think they are pretty clean. If it's not the scope all I'm left with is the {1) location - perhaps 20 minutes out of Bristol is still too near the city heat, and this is spoiling the seeing, or, (2) Me! Maybe I just have made less progress as a visual observer than I'd like, and maybe more hours in the seat is the remedy.

Both cases lead to the same conclusion. Get out with the scope more! Look more carefully!

Under favourable atmospheric conditions, Cassini's division should be very easy with a 10 in reflector, I've found it easy to see with both a 4in Refractor and a 6in Newtonian, under good conditions, and when the rings are reasonably wide open. It should still be fairly easy this year, but harder next year, and very difficult by 2024 as the rings gradually close.

The key is the atmospheric viewing conditions, a Neodymium filter will help a bit, also an ADC (Atmospheric Dispersion Corrector). Personally I prefer the Baader Neodymium filter to the Contrast Booster, as I don't like the yellow cast the latter imparts, not so bad on Mars and Saturn, but more noticeable on Jupiter and the Moon.

John 

31 minutes ago, Peter_D said:

Hello,

Here are a couple of images of Jupiter and Mars taken with my 8 inch Meade SCT and Zwo asi224mc this morning (02:30 UTC).

Seeing was very good - cool and still air.

The moon in the Jupiter image is Io. The Mars image has artifacts but it has some surface detail visible - I think I can see

Valles Marineris jutting upwards to the mid left?

Clear skies

Peter

These are excellent photos, on Mars in particular, considering the apparent diameter of the disc is currently less than 8 arc seconds. 

8 hours ago, Nigella Bryant said:

Hiya, yes, Astro trails £50 each deposit.

Thanks for the info, we'll probably book it shortly then, they want 30% now for Mexico 2024, with a further 20% in April 2023.

John 

1 hour ago, Nigella Bryant said:

I've already provisionally booked for the 2026 and 2027 total eclipses, lol 

Is that with Astro Trails, if so how much deposit did they want at this stage.

We were planning booking Project Mexico Tour 4 with them in 2024, Eclipse plus Classical Spain in 2026, and Egypt (Luxor) plus Nile Cruise in 2027.

Their rival company, Astro Eclipse, with whom we went to Argentina in July 2019, don't appear to be advertising any trios at present. 

19 hours ago, yuklop said:

The one I got had been previously upgraded with an awr kit. It was a very good job done. I was looking for something a bit easier to integrate with a pc for imaging and had prior experience with onstep, so I took off the awr drives and replaced them with an onstep system. If you are a bit handy onstep could be for you, and the whole thing can be done for a couple of hundred quid.

 

Let me see know if your interested in onstep and I can surely help you out.

Ideally I would like my Astro Systems fork mount upgraded to GOTO facility, but realise that retro fitting encoders to enable this would be prohibitively expensive, even if it was possible at all. The RA drive has a 720 teeth worm wheel driven by a 1/2 rev per minute synchronous motor, and the size of the RA wheel may limit what a stepper motor could achieve when it comes to rapid slewing. 

I currently use a sidereal clock (actually use an app on my phone now rather than the actual clock), in conjunction with the meridian pointer (see attached photos) to find celestial objects which are not visible to the naked eye. I find this more accurate than the GOTO facility on my Celestron 9.25 CPC,  and is an excellent method for finding Mercury and Venus in daylight, which the CPC system cannot readily do. 

I am also more of a planet than a deep sky observer, and my present system can keep a planet at high power in the field of view for over an hour, much better than the CPC mount or the AZ EQ5 (with the ES 127) can achieve, so I couldn't really justify spending a lot of money upgrading the fork mount. 

John 

3 minutes ago, Paz said:

I had a look on sky safari and it says Iapetus is magnitude 11.5 at the moment it goes into transit. Aperture permitting that would be ok if it was a star on its own but I wonder how easy it will be to see near to the brightness of Saturn. In transit I wonder if it would look like a bright dot or a dark dot or just be invisible in the glare. It may be one worth trying for - I assume the temperature will mean observing in shorts and t shirt at 1am will be ok?

I would very much doubt that it would be visible through amateur sized telescopes, I think only transits of Titan can be seen through these, but we will have to wait until 2025 to see them. 

19 hours ago, yuklop said:

I posted my message in the wrong thread, but its worked out somehow. The base looks exactly like that one, and yes, the axes cannot be locked. They can be made quite stiff though, as mine has 3 large nylon tipped screws on each axis that can be tightened or loosened to set the amount of force required to move the axis.  They are under the black painted cowling on mine, so could be worth digging into your one and seeing if you have them.

I do have two of what can be best described as stiffener knobs on the Dec axis (you can see one of them in the 2nd photo), and one on the RA axis. I have replaced the original knobs on the Dec axis with larger knobs (see 3rd photo) but they are still insufficient to hold the scope in place when you insert a heavy eyepiece, camera etc. 

It's interesting that you had your mount upgraded by AWR Technology, I assume that potentially they could do the same with mine (the mount is driven by a mains AC synchronous motor with variable frequency oscillator (by Nigel Groom of Astrotech), and variable speed DC Dec motor). The problem in my case however would be stripping down the mount (which would not be easy), and transporting it to Kent. Ideally if I wanted to go down that route, I would need to find someone who could do it on site, but this would almost certainly be prohibitively expensive. 

The base plate looks the same design as that of the fork mount on my 14in Newtonian which was built and designed by Rob Miller of Astro Systems (Luton), in 1983 (see attached photos), it still has the original RA and Dec motors,  which are still in working order after nearly 40 years!

Although a very substantial and solid mount (I currently have piggybacked on it my Esprit 150 Refractor), it does suffer from the same problem of not being able to lock the axes, necessitating having to rebalance the scope if you attach a heavy eyepiece, barlow or camera. 

21 hours ago, Stefan87 said:

Hey everyone! I have recently received a second hand ES ed80 triplet refractor that I purchased in some classifieds. Tonight was my first light with it after months of cloud and I immediately found I had severely elongated stars at the top of the frame. I run it without a FF/FR as the bloke I purchased it off uses the same camera (Asi533mcpro) and he said it didn't need one due to the small chip size of the camera. 

This would lead me to assume he had not experienced the same problem as me. I have a long imaging train with a filter drawer and an OAG for guiding. I immediately thought this was flexing and took an exposure pointed at zenith only to find the same issue. My guiding was ok, sitting at 1" or 2". 

I'm concerned that I have stuffed the collimation by removing the lens to get some marks off the inside during some cloud induced boredom. I loosened some of the Alan bolts around the edge and pulled the entire assembly out. In hindsight I realise how stupid this was, but I was careful and I'm not sure if this is the issue or if I simply need a field flattener?

I've attached a fits file that I captured showing the elongation and a picture of my imaging train. I'm really hoping I haven't stuffed my collimation by removing the glass.

 

Thanks everyone

 

Stefan2022-02-09_21-45-05__-10.00_180.00s_0008.fits2022-02-09_21-45-05__-10.00_180.00s_0008.fits

 

 

Explore Scientific do specifically state in their manuals NOT to remove the lens assembly from the tube, as it cannot accurately replaced other than by an expert.  

4 hours ago, mikeDnight said:

 When I moved from my FS128 to my FS152, I noticed little difference in the amount of detail seen. I

 

I notice a substantial difference in the amount of lunar and planetary detail visible, and the sharpness of the view, between my Esprit 150 Refractor and my Explore Scientific 127 FCD 100 Refractor, which I put down partly to the superiority of the Esprit lens (which according to Es Reid was one of the best he had tested), in addition to the extra 23 mm of aperture. 

John 

2 hours ago, HollyHound said:

Bit of an odd purchase but it’s definitely “astro related”… a rubber strap wrench from Amazon for the princely sum of just under £4 😮

The reason… I attached my newly acquired CQ 1.7x Extender to my FS-60CB last week and am enjoying the converted scope, but wanted to revert back for a few days… problem was although the tube unscrewed easily enough, it left the extender module behind on the scope focuser tube and no amount of twisting by hand would budge it (it’s possible I overtightened it 🤔), as there is very little purchase and most of that is sharp threads!

This little strap wrench wrapped around the protruding extender part and with minimal effort (and no damage to anything), it unscrewed easily 👍

Those of you with these Extenders… don’t overtighten and consider getting one of these little tools… great for opening tight jam jar lids too apparently 🤣

 

Might also be useful for unscrewing a seized up dewshield, I have an old oil filter removal strap which is made of metal (apart from the strap), and could therefore mark the scope, this one being made of plastic should be more 'gentle'.

I've never ben able to see visually any of the moons of Uranus, or Triton of Neptune through my 14 in Newtonian, put it down to a combinations of my skies being too light polluted, and my poor eyesight.

John 

15 hours ago, Chris said:

They have just upgraded from their two security lights to 3 security lights. I thought it was the Full Moon glaring through the curtains!

Its all getting out of hand now, there should be regulations limiting the light output of security lights, can you not complain to the council under 'Statutory Nuisance'. Its not so bad if the lights are just sensor activated and on intermittently, but increasingly they are often on continuously. 

Its not just astronomers that are affected, these lights also have an adverse effect on wildlife.

John 

26 minutes ago, JeremyS said:

Two Naglers. 17mm T4 and 11mm T6.

Thanks @callisto👍🏻

 

The 17 mm Type 4 looks massive for just a 17 mm eyepiece. 

Tempted to get one as a more portable scope to take on trips.

Would be interested to see how in compares with my ES 127 FCD100 Refractor on planets, according some some claims it may give superior views, if I find that to be the case then I would offset some of the cost by selling my ES 127.

John 

5 hours ago, Swithin StCleeve said:

I've never worried about asking stupid questions on SL before, so I won't start now, (insert smiley here!)

In October's Astronomy Now magazine (which arrived two days ago), it tells me Mercury is viewable from the UK next month at dawn, and highest on 24th Oct. Yet on the Southern Sky page, it says it's visible at dusk.
I can't get my head round that. Venus is an 'evening star' in both north and south hemispheres in October, so why isn't Mercury?

I think what they might be saying in October's Astronomy Now magazine (Incidentally I haven't received my copy yet), is that Mercury might be visible as an evening star from the southern hemisphere for the first few days of October (prior to inferior conjunction), and then visible as a morning star from the northern hemisphere later in the month, greatest elongation west occurring around the 24th.