Stub Mandrel

Composite of Jupiter and three moons - I had to process the 'Europa/Callisto' layer harder, because the seeing diffused them so much they didn't stack as well as Io.

I almost didn't bother with these after seeing @Aussie Dave's recent Saturn - before I noticed he's 'aussie' Dave and not having to struggle with the planet being at 15 degree altitude, camera at 24-degrees (temperature) and the seeing being like boiling water. But tehre were some moments of slightly better seeing, scroll down for the results First run at Jupiter was ironically one of the best, and caught the red spot and Ioop with it's shadow just on the point of leaving the disk: One of the last Saturn's was best as it neared its 'highest' point: Finally, a rather crummy image of Saturn, a stack of nine long-exposure frames (the darn planet then disappeared behind a roof!) Definitely Titan, Dione and Rhea, I'm sure Tethys is there and even a hint of Mimas! Wait until it is higher up and I can get a thousand frames! 2019-07-22-2215_3_pipp_Saturn_l4_ap25.tif

Next galaxy season I think I might do some 'galaxy hunting' with the ASI120MC - and fitting cooling to it. Live stacking alongside collecting imaging data kills two birds with one stone!

Last night I did some imaging of Jupiter and Saturn, although I find the 'observation' on the laptop equally rewarding. Good views of both planets and their moons, including three of Saturn's moons. Finished off with a test on M27 doing 15 second exposures -I have tried this before but wanted to practice in the hope of doing a demo on Friday night. The blue parts were very obvious. I saved a 44 frame stack as a FITS in Sharpcap, and processed with a fairly basic stretch, balance curves and denoise. All unguided. I can't see any conflict between EEA and imaging when you are doing it this way.

Interesting, but one problem mayl be that epoxy is used to encapsulate a lot of electronics - it may attack other parts of the assembly 😞

How are you attaching the camera? A T2 to 2" nosepiece and a T2 to Canon adaptor should work just dandy. I use the 2" coma corrector with a T2 adaptor. If you use a 1.25" nosepiece using a 2" to 1.25" adaptor as well may be adding too much length.

Do you have 'back page Co. 4?"

Thin cloud here, forecast to disappear, hopefully -this could be my night to get this year's Saturn?

Possibly, but the surveyor landings gave them a fair degree of confidence that they wouldn't simply sink into a sea of dust - they also had abort points within seconds and minutes of landing, if necessary.

The moon is about 30 earth-diameters away, much closer than we tend to think!

With every ounce being trimmed and very limited space swivel chairs would not have been practical - also because of the heat shield it's only practical to have windows in the conical end of the Command Module. Most importantly, however, the astronauts needed to be right on top of the Saturn V at launch so the escape rocket would be able to pull the command module free in an emergency, leaving empty service module and lunar module to their fate. In fact, they didn't have a view at all until after the escape rocket with its cone covering the command module jettisoned around stage 2 separation. Another consideration is that the complex mechanism and critical seals for the docking mechanism could easily have been damaged by the extreme acceleration and vibration of launch if the two parts were connected from the start.

I set an alarm to wake me up in the small hours so I could listen to the moonwalk on 'Apollo real time'. Just been through Eagle's lift off and return to orbit.

I spotted something NASA missed in all their plans - I 've been listening to 'Apollo 11 in real time' and when Neil and Buzz returned after the moonwalk, they removed the PLSS antennae from their suits as planned and stow them - these are what they used to communicate with each other and CAPCOM from the surface. Then fifteen anxious minutes for Houston until they realise why they can't contact the astronauts, as they haven't yet been able to activate the LMs comms.

Covfefe...? 😉

I bought a very well written and illustrated Apollo 11 special from WH Smiths. About £6 but thick and ad free. Heads up, visit https://apolloinrealtime.org/11/ If you follow it as live+50 years the landing process starts in about 30 minutes.

imaging... gutters 🙂

Across the web there are multiple solvent options for Sony sensors including acetone and MEK. The Canon ones are epoxy based and the most you can expect to achieve is softening of the matrix.. After 102 pages is there any consensus on the safest approach to Canon debayering? I might have a go with my 1000D

Lovely flamed veneer! Far too good for a scope...

🙂 Sorry Gina...

Is the orange a protest against the dominance of green accessories 🙂

Eclipse watching last night, using the C90 Mak.

Couple of mine from last night. Not long after the moon came up: Max eclipse:

Would a symptom of this be the system behaving as if it's low on memory when stacking files?

I suspect it eliminates atmospheric dispersion by creating a narrowband image, giving a sharper result.

Well that was nice, got a good hours worth of imaging and some nice views of moon and Jupiter including with my vintage Tasco.