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New member, first experiences.

bishbosh

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bishbosh

bishbosh

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Hi All,

Thought I'd better introduce myself, I've been interested in the stars and planets for as long as I can remember and after much reading and research I finally bought a telescope (with help from family) from RVO for my birthday.

I bought a Skywatcher Explorer 200PDS on a HEQ5 Pro mount. To start with I will be observing the planets, the moon and maybe DSOs but would eventually like to do some astrophotography once I am competent. The supplied eyepiece is a Skywatcher 28mm LET which seems nice but I have nothing to compare to. I also bought an adaptor ring to allow my DSLR to mount to the focuser directly.

I've not had much opportunity to use it with the recent poor weather so I put the downtime to good use and built a power tank. I didn't want to be dragging a cable outside each time so thought it better to make a tank from some spare components lying around.

post-48084-0-61342900-1448279858_thumb.j

It is a 35Ah AGM mobility battery so not too heavy to lug around. There is a battery monitor circuit which shows the battery state with the LEDs.

Anyway I managed to get out the last 2 nights and tried the telescope, this was also the first time I used the power tank. The polarfinder reticule was centred already so the next thing to do was to attempt to polar align the mount. I found the instructions in the manual very confusing :( In the end the Synscan controller said where to locate Polaris in the reticule and the result agreed with PolarFinder so that was good. I failed completely at the star alignment step as I found out I knew nothing about which star was which so decided to slew manually for the time being.

I began by manually slewing to the moon, WOW, apart from nearly burning my retinas off the view was amazing :) I then looked at Pleiades which was one of the few objects I knew of, never seen it so nice and bright before :)

Going back to the moon I attempted to take some photos of it, being bright enough I didn't need to worry about tracking as I could use fairly short exposure times. I didn't find it a particularly easy task though, for starters I had trouble focussing - I'm wondering if the camera (Nikon D7000) is too heavy for the focuser? Is there any particular angle that the focuser should be at with the weight hanging off it? The focus seemed to slip and it was hard getting the image sharp in the viewfinder. However with the eyepiece I had no trouble at all.

Here are 2 photos to begin with, the second one is overexposed - operator error:

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post-48084-0-14902800-1448282078_thumb.j

Anyway, the cold got the better of me and I decided to call it a night, thanks for taking the time to read. I'm sure I'll have more questions but I'll save them for another topic!

Thanks

Dave

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Putaendo Patrick

Putaendo Patrick

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Great photos, although I can't see the US flag. Are you sure it's the Moon?

Seriously, I too spend several hours observing the Moon last night. If you haven't, you might want to download the "Virtual Moon Altas" programme for your computer. It took me a few minutes to flip the maps so they corresponded to what I was seeing in the eyepiece, but from then on I could identify every feature. The people these features are named after is also a fascinating way to learn a bit about the history of astronomy.

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Astro Imp

Astro Imp

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You have a great scope with which to explore the nigh sky.

As mentioned above the Virtual Moon Atlas is a very useful free guide, here's a link:- http://sourceforge.net/projects/virtualmoon/

An equally useful free guide to the night sky is Stellarium, the link's here:- http://www.stellarium.org/

HTH and enjoy this great hobby.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Balok

Balok

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Hi Bishbosh, it looks like you are off to the races.

Thank you for the pix, A great choice for a  scope - you'll get lots of very bright views with it.

The summer Milky Way should be stunning.

BTW- I love your power plant too! Iit has a great look to it - very cool.

Must look really cool at night with those green display lights on.

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D4N

D4N

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Your camera can achieve 30fps at 720p, that is better than most webcams but not as good as a planetary camera.

Your focuser should have a screw under it that you tighten to lock the focus position and stop it slipping.

You can make or buy a bahnitov mask to help with focus.

It is surprising how far out what you think is good focus actually is when you check it properly.

It is impressive to get some good images on the first attempt, did you process them at all? The moon responds well to wavelet sharpening.

/Dan

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

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bishbosh

bishbosh

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Hmm, thought I'd replied but obviously not.

No, I didn't process them at all. My camera has a rangefinder function which indicates when the image is in focus. This only works in manual mode of course, the next time I get out - hopefully tonight - then I'll be playing around with it some more :)

I spotted the focus locking screw the other day - it's not always evident in the manual what things are for.

Cheers

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Physopto

Physopto

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You are off to a great start. One point though, you could cover the battery terminals with something to stop shorts. It is inevitable that at some time you may short out these with something dropped. It is easy to just take some washing gloves and snip off the fingers so you can fit them over the terminals. could save a nasty accident!

Good luck with your new setup and the viewing.

Derek

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