zwo asl1220mc

[daz01968]

when i look at the moon with my new zwo cam through my telescope  i can only view a little bit at the time , it seems to be to big to magnified. but when i point it to a star you cant see it, like it hasnt got the power to view something so small, is their a way of sorting this out

[jambouk]

What telescope are you using? unless it has a very short focal length you won't ever be able to see the whole moon as the sensor on the camera is very small. To take a whole moon picture you'll need to make a mosaic which sounds horrendously difficult but is very easy and very rewarding.

The likely reasons you can't see a star is either:

- You have the gain / exposure settings wrong and you need to allow longer time in your exposure for the photons to fill up the wells on the sensor

- your focus is out; if the focus is wrong you won't see a star as the point of light becomes spread put as a diffuse very faint mass

- the light from the star isn't actually hitting the sensor of the camera (the likely cause).. Imagine you are using a 6mm eye piece and try and centre a star which doesn't start out in the field of view, this is effectively what you are trying to do with the camera. You need to get your goto accuracy as good as possible. Lots of threads on this. You could centre the star in question with sucessive shorter focal length eye pieces, and then swap the eye piece for the camera, and hope the star is there, but you need to do some day light tests to see how much to alter the focus between the last eye piece and the camera...

Very difficult to describe all this online. Are you a member of a local astronimcal society? If not, join up.

Good luck

James