First attempt at imaging Epsilon Lyrae

[strinjf]

Having got the bug for 'seeing double' after observing the beautiful Albireo I had my first attempt at imaging Epsilon Lyrae last night.

This image was captured using a Skywatcher Explorer 150P + Philips SPC900 webcam, and processed in Registax. I'm well pleased with the result for my first attempt. I'll try to improve on it in coming nights, and will also have to see if I can split them visually.

Capture 19_07_2013 23_15_11 epsilon lry by jonnostringer, on Flickr

[stargazerslivingroom]

That's excellent from an SP900...Wish I could do that with mine!

Congrats on the first post BTW and welcome to SGL.

Steve

[Superdavo]

You should be able to split epsilon with the 150 on a decent night - I've done it with the same scope at 200x several times

[Avocette]

Nice work! I've managed to see three of the four visually but the dimmer fourth must have been lost in the glow from its brighter neighbour, well so far that is. With your webcam, do you drive the mount or keep it stationary and let registax compensate for the earth's movement and image rotation?

[iksose7]

Nice one! I didnt know about this double double

[strinjf]

Nice work! I've managed to see three of the four visually but the dimmer fourth must have been lost in the glow from its brighter neighbour, well so far that is. With your webcam, do you drive the mount or keep it stationary and let registax compensate for the earth's movement and image rotation?

The OTA is mounted on an EQ3-2 which is manually driven .. so no motor drive for tracking. I simply start a video capture as the target enters the FOV and then stop the capture before the target leaves the FOv, and then as you said, Registax takes up the strain and stacks the frames of the moving image. Obviously this means I am limited to relatively short captures but I am very happy with the results I am getting on such a bargain basement set up.

[Stu]

Very nice result, not an easy target

I do love looking at this one visually. Should be good in the 150, your collimating must be pretty good to have split them.

Stu

[todd8137]

You got them nice

pat

[strinjf]

I had another go at imaging Epsilon Lyrae last week.. but this time without using the 2x Barlow. Without it I couldn't split the close pairs in the captured video.

Then I had a go at observing them visually with the 15mm EP + barlow (101x magnification if my calculations are correct) and I could just about make out the splits. Then I went for broke and popped my 6mm EP (which I don't particularly like) into the barlow (253x magnification I think) which made the split more convincing but the image was a rather ropey!

[prokyon]

Nice result, you did it!

[strinjf]

.......... your collimating must be pretty good to have split them.

more by luck than judgement I can assure you