Kon

Thanks for the info. I will take a look while I am contemplating to buy a mono camera.

I don't have an adc. It was at 16 degrees so quite low. Looking forward to later in the season but good to get the teething issues out of the way.

Great observations. Keep an eye on the planetary imaging section, where some of us are pursuing UV clouds so it may help you with the visual.

I have been using my cheap Astromania UV filter on Venus and I did a side by side test with a mono and colour camera (based on some offline discussions). Cheap filters seem to suffer from ghosting. It seems to be more of an issue with my colour asi462mc than the mono Altair Astro GPCAM 290M (thanks again @CraigT82). So the filter itself is good (from my limited experience) and it is something to do with the colour cameras? First image altair after i tidied the ghosting and some post processing, second after registax and third with asi. ASI is also not that sensitive at that wavelength either. I also got some data in IR, not many clouds this time, and made the colour version of the clouds (last image, 200% resized). 8" Dob, manual, 2.5x TV powermate.

That's a great sketch and it looks you may have picked some of the clouds. In my recent Venus imaging post in UV, I could see similar structures but the darker areas seem inverted in yours.

I have submitted these images in the moon imaging competition section, but I thought it would be good to have them here for the record. First image: Walther and Lunar X. I love the shadow casting inside the crater; right timing to capture it. Second image: Theophilus, Cyrillus and Catharina. Third image: Hercules, Atlas and Endymion. Third: 8" Dob, manual, asi462mc, UV/IR cut filter, 2.5 TV powermate.

Hercules, Atlas and Endymion (26/3/23). 8" Dob, manual, asi462mc, UV/IR cut filter, 2.5 TV powermate.

Theophilus, Cyrillus and Catharina craters on 26/2/23. 8" Dob, manual, asi462mc, UV/IR cut filter, 2.5 TV powermate.

Mallet and Young craters from 8/2/23. 8" Dob, manual, asi462mc, UV/IR cut filter, 2.5 TV powermate.

Yes absolutely and I use that technique some times for my visual and most of the time for ISS imaging.

Actually, I offset the target at the crosshair side as John pointed above and let it drift through the centre. It takes a few attempts and I usually rotate the camera to give me a long sensor drift from left to right. I usually use asicapture but for my latest Venus was with FC and now I know what I am doing I will give it a try.

I found with my manual Dob that using the full sensor frame is fine with the thick crosshair but it is becoming harder when i get down to 640x480 ROI. The centre of the crosshair is not square to the sensor any more and I need to re-align it. I have tried what John suggested above to offset but when you go to the tight ROI, it is even harder. For visual the RACI is perfect.

Walther and Lunar X on 27/02/23. 8" Dob, manual, asi462mc, 2.5xTV powermate.

Aristoteles and Eudoxus on 27/2/23. 8" Dob, manual, asi462mc, 2.5xTV powermate.

Aristoteles and Eudoxus were casting nice shadows tonight. 8" Dob, manual, asi462mc, 2.5xTV powermate.

I have the Skywatcher RACI and it also has thick crosshair. It is fine when I am at f15 but f20 will be harder. (Stuart, I thought you were tracking, no?)

Thanks Stuart. There is a bit of ghosting but not too severe at all. During post processing it is hardly noticeable. When I am back at my laptop I will send you an image after stacking to see how it looks. Ps I had really bad ghosting on my asi but I used a high gain with a lower exposure with the mono. I want to repeat with my asi under similar settings.

Thanks again for the camera. Yes very pleased with the first attempt. Looking forward to the summer session without the freezing cold.

Looking forward to your capture.

I have finally managed to capture some of the upper clouds in Venus using a UV and IR pass filter. I am really grateful to Craig @CraigT82 for posting me his mono camera last week to try with my filters. That is so kind of somebody that has never met me before. My asi did not give me anything meaningful last week in UV. I used the Astromania filters and they seem to be good value for money (I will try write a report on them at some point). Enough with the intro. The mono camera allowed me to capture the UV clouds. Seeing was awful with boiling effects. The IR faired better. Again from personal experience I found that my asi was giving me better clouds. The technical details: 8" Dob, manual tracking, 2.5x TV powermate, Altair Astro GPCAM 290M for UV and asi462mc for the IR. Filters from Astromania. I also made a false colour composite as RGB: IR=R IR+UV=G UV=B. Happy for feedback and criticism.

I was out last night and did a tour of the Leo galaxies with my 8" Dob after I spent 2hrs collimating it (I thought i was losing collimation but it is the movement of the cheap focuser that makes it look like it loses collimation relative to the cheshire eyepiece; i think that's sorted now. I abs odid the milk carton modification as well). Transparency was excellent. I started with a star test and all good 🤣. The Leo triplet, M65/66/NGC3628 was the first one and all of them were visible in the same FOV. I then moved to NGC3367 and 3377. Further down NGC3412/M105/NGC3384. M95 and M96 showing some disc like shape. All bright even at mag 10-11.5 (as i said transparency was excellent). A set of galaxies that eluded me last year was Hickson 44; NGC3185/NGC3193/NGC3189 were all visible (no sign of NGC3187 as it is beyond my 8" Dob), although NGC3185 was only coming with averted vision. I finished off with Markarian's Chain. Just mesmerising, galaxy after galaxy after galaxy.

Excellent image. One of my favourite areas to image due to the riles. They look really sharp. I enjoyed your write up as always, very insightful.

Excellent report and galaxy season seems to be on!

Thanks Geof. I am using a cheap set of Astromania filters and so far so good. I have got some great suggestions to try and see if I can get something decent. I didn't fancy the price tag of the high end ones just for one planet. Looking forward to the planetary season.

685nm and 650nm respectively