First Light - Meade DSI II

[ScubaMike]

Managed to get out on Saturday night/Sunday morning.

Some beautiful viewing of a lovely moon, skies clear(ish) to the East.

Set up without accurately polar aligning (polaris obscured) but was "in the ball park".

Decided to try the moon through new DSI II. (Not ideal instrument, but waiting for modded SPC900 to arrive).

Struggled terribly to bring into focus, don't think I really got anywhere close. Live view was very green.

Has been suggested that I need to adjust the colour balance in Envisage. Will have to read a bit more of the manual I suppose .

Battered, but not beaten.

For information, was using SW 150PL, 0.5 focal reducer on DSI, manually tracking. When focusing, I lined up using a 15mm EP, switched to the DSI, directly mounted. Should I be moving the fcous tube in? or out? to achived focus (I'm sure there are people here who will be able to work out the focal point, and determine which way I should be moving). Sensor temp rose to, and then held steady at, about 16 degrees.

Finished off with some nice visuals of Jupiter before tiredness overcame me.

Also discovered that my finder scope (standard SW) was not quite as accurate as I thought it was. One more adjustment to make.

[Si W]

The focus is inwards, if you can focus with a 15mm EP it shouldn't be far off focus for the DSI, have you got a low profile focuser on your scope ?, this would effect the inward travel, if you have a x2 barlow take the lens of the end an extend the focus length , if it does come into focus you will either need to use the barlow tube, or if you have a 2ins focuser you can buy a 45mm extension tube.

[ScubaMike]

Thanks Si,

Spent some time getting my finderscope correctly aligned with the OTA, and playing with the DSI focus on terrestrial targets.

Hopefully getting more comfortable with the camera will make life easier when in the dark.

There was no "green" in the images from terrestrial

Clouds look like they will be reasonable light tonight, so may get out to play again later.

[Si W]

Due to the lack of dark this time of the year and high temperature, i do see a lot of noise on my images as well, and thats was in Mono mode and colour (just down to temperature as the DSI is un-cooled), as i have found this time of the year (except between midnight and 1 am), if i use colour it picks up alot of blue/green light that is scattered in the atmosphere. If however the screen is green all over you need to set your colour, just click on colour and then ok and it will automatically adjust the colour of the object you want to image, you my find that you will have to do this at different exposers lengths.

I would certainly agree with day time testing, it will help you to get use to your kit, focusing, also you can par focal an EP as well so saving you time later.

[todd8137]

hi mike nice to hear your putting the new kit through its paces and learning more each session did you try the rgb sliders within the sofware ?when i had the rack and pinion i found it hard some times to get focus with cams in the end me dad took the T mount adapter to work and milled it down so it had more inward travel which gave me more focus (more inwards travel) and it worked a treat ,i brought a crayford focuser in the end i then had to buy a 50mm t adapter to suite that but now focus is never a prob made a bartinov and bobs ya auntie,bet the wait for the modded cam is a pain, its been a wash out here for daysgoing to buxton at the week end if the weather is fine going to strip the dob down and chuck it in my mates van and tale the frac he found a great dark site

ckear skies always

pat

ps just a after thought you are shooting in the moon in black and white ? and not in color?