Moon eclipse tonight, help please.

[eddie3000]

Hello everybody.

I'm looking forward to the moon eclipse tonight, and I spent a few hours just setting up and testing my stuff last night. I intend to make a timelapsed video of the eclipse, using my dslr.

I have an heq5 pro mount, and I have never used the lunar tracking until last night. The thing is that the mount is slow, it doesn't keep up with the moon. If I center the moon on my eyepiece, or on my dslr with an 800mm lens piggyback mounted, it takes about 15minutes to exit the frame. The sidereal tracking has worked fine as I've used it for long periods, and on much smaller targets.

Am I doing something wrong?

Anyway, as I am going to watch it live, the quick and simple solution is to manually correct the tracking, and align the images later for the video.

I have the heq5 pro mount, a skywatcher mn190, a nikon d80, a sigma 200mm f2.8 lens with teleconverter (a total of 400mm f5.6 lens) and a Vivitar 800mm f8 mirror lens. The mn190 gives better images than any of the two lenses, but I thought that I may prefer to look through the scope myself and piggy mount the camera with one of those lenses. Does anybody have any other suggestions?

This is the first time I am going to see a lunar eclipse with my toys, and I'm pretty excited about it (except for the part when I have to get up at half past five AM to go to work!). Cheers!

[eddie3000]

Doesn't anybody know anything about the heq5pro not keeping up with the moon? I've read many users have had problems with the syntrek hand controller, but not this. Thanks.

[Ant]

Forget the lunar rate and just use Sidereal rate and make small adjustments as and when needed!

Lunar rate seemed to work ok when I tried it - but I never select anything other than Sidereal rate now.

Cheers

Ant

Ant

[acey]

Does anybody have any other suggestions?

I'm sure you'll have done so already, but make sure you've got a clear south-eastern horizon to see the rising moon (if you're in UK).

Total Eclipse of the Moon: 2011 June 15

[jgs001]

I've not got the pro, but I use Lunar tracking with my HEQ5 SynTrek a lot. Never had a problem with it.

[MjrTom]

Time for me to test out the lunar tracking of my Astrotrac... should the clouds ever clear....

[eddie3000]

Thanks guys! I'll try sidereal rate then, maybe the lunar tracking isn't meant for the moon???

I'm in Spain, hopefully I'll get fairly clear skies, but I have a house straight in front of mine that'll keep the moon out of sight when it rises. I guess my best solution would be to go some place else.

Thanks again, I'll make do with the syntrek as it is, I'll look into my problem afterwards.

Hopefully I'll get a few good pics.

Good luck to you all, lets hope we all get clear skies.

[Mr Spock]

Looks like rain tonight over here so we'll look forward to seeing your results

[Digz]

Is your mount a goto? If so set it up and select the moon and it should automatically switch to the appropriate tracking rate.

Failing that sidereal with occasional adjustment will do.

Shames its all academic really as it looks rather cloudy outside at the moment

[Astro Imp]

Not looking good here, in fact downright horrible

[mag10]

For what it's worth:

Last night and tonight is the first time in months we're going to have two (relatively) good nights of seeing (but gone again tomorrow!)...

...and we can't see the eclipse from here!

Break a leg, to all of you on the right parts of Earth to see it.

[aussi skywatcher]

All to no avail here in South Australia - cloud cover spoilt it - hope you guys get better weather up there.

Paul

[eddie3000]

At first I thought I was going to miss it, there were quite a few distant clouds making the moon totally invisible, but it eventually made it's way up into the sky. It was windy, making my timelapse video an absolute pain to do, so we'll have to put up with a few photos. The mn190 is just a bit too much for the heq5.

And guess what! Clever little me forgot the dslr adaptor for the telescope at home!

All I could do is take photos through the 800mm mirror lens that isn't really all that good. A real shame, I'm sure the photos through the telescope would have been much much sharper and less noisier.

The first photo is a touched up one, maybe a bit too fake. The rest are only cropped and reduced in size.

Next time I won't be leaving the dslr adaptor behind.

And about the lunar tracking problem, I'll have to study that to see what going on. I'm pretty sure it's supposed to track the moon, and not gradually lag behind. The sidereal rate worked fine for me this time around.

Cheers.

[Telrad]

Nice pictures Eddie despite not having an adaptor and sorting the tracking. Thanks for posting!

[rowan46]

thanks for that, due to weather I missed it again, have never yet been able to see a lunar eclipse through a scope.

[eddie3000]

Thank you for saying the pictures are nice Telrad, you are so kind. But we know they're not all that great thanks to silly me. :)

But the good thing was that I got to see the eclipse very well through the scope. I think I got the best sight with a 19mm eyepiece. I did mess around with all my eyepieces, but the 19mm was the best IMO. This was my first lunar eclipse through a telescope, the second in my life. I really really recommend it if you have the chance.