First Saturn of the season

[Delboy_Hog]

Very nice indeed James, well done! How are you finding that camera?

[todd8137]

Okay no worries James just thought I'd mention it.

i thought the 742 ir was was for 5" and below ,any thing above 5" go for the 840 ir pass i have both and they both work well

[JamesF]

I reckon it's there, yes Roger. That was one of the things that pleased me so much about these images. I've never captured that for certain before now.

I've just been looking at the images on a different screen and I reckon not only is the C ring clearly there, but there's also perhaps the tiniest hint of the Encke division.

James

[JamesF]

Very nice indeed James, well done! How are you finding that camera?

Much happier now I've had a chance to play with it in better seeing. I definitely think it beats my SPC900 even with the limited aperture of the little Mak and the fact that I can use less focal length to get the same image scale because of the smaller pixel size really does make life much easier with the lower end kit that I'm currently using.

James

[JamesF]

i thought the 742 ir was was for 5" and below ,any thing above 5" go for the 840 ir pass i have both and they both work well

The way I read it (and I may be wrong) the 840 is suitable for 8" apertures and above whereas the 742 is suitable for apertures greater than 5". I accept that I may have entirely misinterpreted it though. I might drop Bernd an email when I get back to a laptop I have email configured on.

James

[JamesF]

Oh, I am sitting outside at my laptop at the moment. I have tried some RGB, but aside from not being able to work out how to get FireCapture to switch filters between runs I have discovered that the back end of my Mak just isn't rigid enough to carry the weight of the filter wheel and camera. If the EQ3-2 were more accurate then I could fit the filter wheel direct to the visual back, but I need an eyepiece to get the scope centred perfectly before I go to the camera. I also need to fit the barlow in somehow. Ideally what I need is a male T2 to female 1.25" adapter so I could leave the filter wheel in with an empty slot or the L filter and use an eyepiece, then centre again with the barlow in and finally swap to the camera.

In any case, I have abandoned the idea of RGB for the moment and have the colour camera doing capture runs right now. The seeing is drifting somewhere between shocking and awful, but if I get enough capture runs done today it will give me something to do during the two hour conference call I have tomorrow lunchtime

James

[ilove1995]

The way I read it (and I may be wrong) the 840 is suitable for 8" apertures and above whereas the 742 is suitable for apertures greater than 5". I accept that I may have entirely misinterpreted it though. I might drop Bernd an email when I get back to a laptop I have email configured on.

James

Not sure if anyone will find this useful or not but I purchased a 742 IR pass a few months back and got some pleasing images of moon craters using a mono camera on my old 4" nexstar mak. I appreciate though that the moon is a much brighter target than any planet so have no idea how well this would work on Saturn using a small scope as I haven't tried it. I've since replaced the 4" scope with a Skymax 127 so at the next opportunity I'll give it a go on Saturn with my colour SPC900 and report back.

Al

[todd8137]

I use both filters one on my 5" frac and the other on my 9.25 sct they both are great filters

pat

[JamesF]

Not sure if anyone will find this useful or not but I purchased a 742 IR pass a few months back and got some pleasing images of moon craters using a mono camera on my old 4" nexstar mak. I appreciate though that the moon is a much brighter target than any planet so have no idea how well this would work on Saturn using a small scope as I haven't tried it. I've since replaced the 4" scope with a Skymax 127 so at the next opportunity I'll give it a go on Saturn with my colour SPC900 and report back.

That would be a useful datapoint.

I'm thinking that I could still go this route even without RGB if I did my normal colour runs with the colour camera and IR pass runs with the mono camera. Then it's just a question of swapping cameras. Timing may be an issue, of course.

James

[nightfisher]

very good indeed james, and considering thats with a 127 mm its superb, i have been looking for another Mak for my grab an go AZ mount, might go for the 127 myself after seeing this, would also be VERY,VERY stable on the HEQ5 for planet work and lunar

[JamesF]

It's not exactly a "hand luggage" telescope, but if you're going somewhere by car say then it's easily portable. Mine has been with us to France in the car (two adults and two children) with an AZ mount. It's my preferred choice if there's no room for anything bigger.

James

[bm1980]

Top stuff James

Regards

Ben