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Everything posted by geoflewis
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It's a cracking image Dave. As others have said, you're too harsh on yourself.
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Excellent images Kostas, good to see that you’ve broken the back of the collimating issues. Whilst you’ll still need the ADC for Saturn, with Mars and Jupiter both up at ~60 deg elevation later this year, it’s questionable whether there’s any benefit using an ADC for them. I found that the loss from the additional ADC prism glass was greater than the gain from dispersion correction on Mars once it was above ~50 deg last time around. It will be a case of try it and see. Unfortunately, Mars is going to be a pretty small (<15”) this coming apparition - we never get the best views when it is high in the northern hemisphere. Those in the southern hemisphere are the ones that periodically get it both big and high. Geof
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SGL 2023 Challenge 10 - Planets and Special Events
geoflewis replied to MartinB's topic in Imaging Challenge Winners 2023
I was very pleased to find this waiting for me when I returned home after my replacement hip surgery done on Wednesday (14/02). Thank you. -
SGL 2023 Challenge 10 - Planets and Special Events
geoflewis replied to MartinB's topic in Imaging Challenge Winners 2023
Thanks for the 2nd place and congratulations to Kostas and Nigella for their respective 1st and 3rd places. There were many great images posted, so I’m really pleased to make the top 3. -
First light 12" (Skywatcher 300P Goto) - Jupiter (01/02/24)
geoflewis replied to Kon's topic in Imaging - Planetary
Wow Kostas, you don't hang about...!! Sorry that I've only just seen this thread and what a great first light 👏 -
Very nice Harvey.
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That's lovely Kostas, very nicely done.. The saturation is just enough to bring out the colours without becoming garish.
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Excellent images
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Last Jupiter from this apparition (18/01/24)
geoflewis replied to Kon's topic in Imaging - Planetary
A very nice Jupiter swansong for this apparition Kostas -
Excellent image Harvey. It's good to see how much more of the left limb is passing into jovian nighttime shadow since opposition nearly 3 months ago.
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Very nice image Harvey. I think it was a good night as I've seen a few decent images of that double pre occultation event. Unfortunately I didn't cjeck what was coming up and chose that day to swap my planetary rig for DSO camera and rebalanced the scope, so I missed imaging it. It's nice to see what you and others got though.
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It's worth experimenting with the LD. I change mine sometimes, but usually between 0.65 amd 0.8, so Kostas suggestion of 0.7 seems good to me.
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Nicely captured Ian, but there's an artefact on the left limb, which may have come from WinJupos, so I'm wondering what LD value you used for derotation, also whether you used manual derotation?
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A tiny Venus and end of my planetary season...for now
geoflewis replied to Kon's topic in Imaging - Planetary
It's a pity that the seeing didn't play well for you, but it's still a nice capture of the event, with the moons heading towards occultation. -
Just purchased a Celestron C14 orange tube
geoflewis replied to Chrb1985's topic in Discussions - Scopes / Whole setups
Looks good. I have no experience of strain-wave mounts, but not having any CWs does significantly reduce the payload. I would have thought that the C14 was far too heavy for the NEQ6 Pro. Looking forward to seeing your results. -
A tiny Venus and end of my planetary season...for now
geoflewis replied to Kon's topic in Imaging - Planetary
The image on your laptop looks promising 🤞 -
A tiny Venus and end of my planetary season...for now
geoflewis replied to Kon's topic in Imaging - Planetary
I hope you get it 🤞 -
Io and Europa animation, 15th January 2024
geoflewis replied to lukebl's topic in Imaging - Planetary
Excellent animation and still frames of the occultations. -
A tiny Venus and end of my planetary season...for now
geoflewis replied to Kon's topic in Imaging - Planetary
Nicely done Kostas. It’s a pity that you weren’t able to locate Mercury, though from what others said, it looks like it might just about be possible at -0.5. As we discussed, I’m also done with planetary imaging until late Summer, when Mars and Saturn come around again, then it will be a busy season well into 2025, so fingers crossed for some good seeing. I stripped the planetary camera optical train, beefy finder scope, CW extension bar, etc., off my mount, replaced with my QSI583 DSO camera and rebalanced ready to capture some DSOs over the coming weeks, whilst I wait for my cancelled hip surgery to be rescheduled. I did a test run on the Crab Nebula last night, but lost the sky to mist/fog before capturing even 3x5min sub exposures, so hopefully I will be able to complete that in the coming nights/weeks. -
Just purchased a Celestron C14 orange tube
geoflewis replied to Chrb1985's topic in Discussions - Scopes / Whole setups
I look forward to seeing what you can do with it 🤞 -
Just purchased a Celestron C14 orange tube
geoflewis replied to Chrb1985's topic in Discussions - Scopes / Whole setups
I used to have an NEQ6 Pro and never put anything bigger than a 4" APO (TSAP100Q) on it. The C14 itself weighs over 20Kg, so by the time you've added CWs and anything else such as a camera, then I think you will be far in excess of (maybe more than double) the recommended max payload. As other have said, I also wouldn't advice taking the C14 apart to do anything before you use it to see how it performs as is. I'm not familiar with the iOptron Hae43, but from checks on-line it looks to have a similar payload capacity to the NEQ6 Pro, so you're definitely pushing it try the C14 with either of those mounts. -
Thanks Reggie, some sound advice there too