Rusted

I don't mind cats but I couldn't eat a whole one. Burp! I don't think I've ever looked though a cat. We rescued three, tom cat kittens from a barn. They fought like wild cats and we were left with one. He could talk and was the most intelligent creature on the planet. Sadly, he vanished overnight at the age of seven. It was years ago now but we still miss him.

As we are on the subject: I could see "a" in your drawing, Mike. I went back over to the observatory to tidy up after a day of solar imaging between cloud. Venus was still above the trees to the west. So I took off the H-a filter stack and fitted an eyepiece. I was using my iStar 6" f/10, 1500mm f/l, H-alpha objective in a home made OTA. Mounted on my massive, home made Goto GEM, in my home made, raised dome. With the D-ERF, full aperture filter in place, Venus was razor sharp but deep, blood red. A hungry and bloody, half moon! So I added a TS star diagonal and 2x Shorty Barlow. More viewing comfort and eye relief as I worked my way up though my collection of Meade 4000s. I reached the 9.7mm and Venus was still holding sharp at ~300x. None of the usual glow and glare typical of white light viewing. I was [almost] sure I could see soft surface markings and a wavy terminator. BTW: I still had the 2" Beloptik KG3 UV/IR and Baader 35nm H-a filters in place too. You can never have too many filters.

The MkIV can manage a 6" refractor but my 7" f/12 cooked the drive box during the Mercury Transit. The bigger refractor became a bit unwieldy too. It just feels a bit "floppy" instead of absolutely rigid with the 6". The last picture below is my 7" f/12 on the MkIV with a figure for scale. The black scope is a 6" f/8. Do add a turnbuckle to allow fine polar altitude adjustment and safe altitude locking. The original altitude locking screws are usually stripped. You have a much better MkIV than mine! I swapped my rust prone axis shafts over to stainless steel. Be careful here! You must obtain Imperial 1.25" and not 25mm if you need to swap yours! I have one stainless steel worm and one very rust prone, steel one. Both yours look like SS with nicer end-play adjusters. The worm housing adjustment is awful on mine. Tending to zip over the wormwheel teeth when I manually slew. I really wouldn't put a MkIV on a tripod. My massive, welded, 200lb+ pier is only good enough for a 6"refractor. The black wrinkle paint is available in spray cans and is used by motorcycle customizers. Warmth is essential to get a bold wrinkle like your original finish. Enjoy! I waited from the 1960s to finally get my hands on a MkIV. It is a vast improvement on the MkIII but still not perfect. I could never afford a Fullerscopes eyepiece. Let alone a telescope and/or mounting!

These were taken through cloud and overprocessed so are not representative. I have never tried a flat. I shall treat that as my next exercise on my learning curve. Thanks.

What excellent and very natural looking images! Autostakkert can handle larger file sizes if your computer can manage them. I routinely capture 3000 frames at 320fps when [solar] imaging. This takes only a few seconds to capture in SharpCap. Perhaps half a minute more to complete stacking in AS!3 with my reasonably fast USB3, SSD laptop. I imagine it depends how patient you are if you have a much slower computer.

I have been experimenting with a new blocking filter. A 12mm Lunt B1200S2 "straight through." Unfortunately the cloud gods were punishing me for my piggy bank foolishness. Literally mere seconds of clear sun all day. The field of view is obviously larger than the BF5 but has more variations of brightness across the image. [PST Sweet spot.] 800x600 works best with mostly even brightness except at the corners. Had I had a few more periods of sunshine I might have achieved more. I had to remove the 1.25" EP receptacle X and screw the ASI174 directly to the T2 thread on the BF body to achieve inward focus. The BF is completely hidden inside a 2" to T2 threaded adapter.

Thanks Pete. A bit more sun would help.

Thanks Mark. Getting some nice detail with the new 150mm PST mod OTA. The "old gold" colour isn't traditional but I like it. I had a lucky window between gales and showers this afternoon. Just after 15.30 the seeing went to pot, cloud arrived and the gales picked up again from the NW.

Additional images with different frame size and processing after a shower. 800x600 and 640 x 480. Quite a large disturbed area.

Friday 13th between showers: AR 2758. 150/10 H-a, 800x600 0.7ms 320fps.

Some reprocessed images of the short term flare at 12:46[CET]: Mostly playing with iMPPG & PhotoFiltre7. No idea why added a 1 to the AR number. But what do you expect from somebody who once wore flares?

My dome is fine with a west wind while I'm imaging towards the east early in the day. After lunch the wind can get right into the open slit and blow the scope around. A fast camera helps to capture lots of frames between gusts using very short exposures.

I left it much too late to capture properly. Just spotted it on Gong Ha.

Two further images after lunch. At 14.53 the flare was still clearly visible. By 1503 [CET] it had curled itself up to the south east. The seeing is definitely worse than it was before lunch. Though, thankfully, the wind has dropped.

Thanks Peter. Westerly gales don't usually help the seeing. Now turning the dome more into the wind. So it gets in and blows the scope about. Still, pleased with this morning's steadily improving results. Almost continuous sunshine now. I'm going from capture to posting processed stills in only a few short minutes.

Additional images as seeing improves-. Large flare has appeared on northern edge of disturbed area.

Additional images as seeing improves and racing cloud thins. 3k frames in SharpCap at 0.8ms exp, 320fps in 9 seconds, zero gain, 800 x 600, 1144, 1153 & 12.00 CET. Baader 160mm D-ERF, iStar 150/10 H-alpha, Beloptik KG3, Baader 35nm H-a, PST mods, Maier ITF , ZWO ASI174MM. Processed in AS!2, iMPPG and. Cropped, coloured and resized larger in PhotoFiltre7.

Westerly gales and racing heavy cloud. Managed to capture some lighter splodges in the disturbed region. 6" f/10 h-a PST mod ASI174:

Another amazing set of images! Love the 3D proms! The Master never fails to please!

Congratulations on your timely capture despite the poor conditions! Just a slight chance of sunny periods forecast for here tomorrow afternoon. That always means solid cloud. Then it's Wednesday at the earliest, before some serious sunshine. By which time the feature will have evaporated!

Nicely even images. I am unworthy! Would it be bad form to point out the weak, parallel lines at 30°? Newton's Rings from a camera or filter? Do you use a tilt plate? Perhaps try "a flat?" I'll get my coat. PS: Please don't kill the messenger!

The full size image is absolutely stunning! Superbly "lit and choreographed" to perfection.

Thanks Peter. The colour choice is to provide a historical look to match a classical, refractor ethic. Interesting that you should ask that very question: The moon was easily visible through the external D-ERF but I still removed the filter. I haven't tried lunar imaging through it [yet] but do leave the 2" KG3 and 35nm H-a [etalon protection] filters in place. The lens is corrected for H-a red. So leaving these 2" filters in place seems not to matter. They merely reduce IR and UV. The ASI174MM camera is mono so doesn't care about the blood red image colour. It is still lightning fast on the moon. 3-400fps. I had another clear session yesterday evening. The seeing was boiling furiously on the smallest scale! The videos looked awful! I'm trying very hard not to overcook the processing: Still too bright in the highlights: Here are three more quickly processed 'snaps' from last night 5:3:20 before the cloud arrived, on cue at 8:00, in time for dinner.

640x480 3000 frames iStar 150/10 H-a, ASI174.

Thanks for all your support! Cloudy here all morning. Cleared up a bit after lunch but with dreadful thermal wobbling. I'm amazed I had anything to show for it. I reduced exposure to 1ms or less by increasing the gain. Then captured 3k frame videos in about 12 seconds to give AS!2 something to work with. The last image [above] had the most detail but was rather overcooked in iMPPG. I'm still far too slapdash with my processing. The ZWO ASI174 is doing most of the work into SSDs. The technology has advanced on all fronts. It's sheer speed is a huge upgrade over the ASI120MC for bigger apertures like 150mm/ 6" f/10. Never any shortage of light. I'm usually on minimum gain in SharpCap with 2-5ms for surface features. 400fps in 640x480. 300fps at 800 x 600. My old Neximage5 counted its solar captures in minutes, not a few seconds! That's when it wasn't misbehaving. Or the silly cable falling out!