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Jupiter - 10 Jan 2017


furrysocks2

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This is more or less how it went...

 

0615 - awoken by a sharp "you forgot to put the bins out!"

Wheeling them out, I gasped at the clear skies and the prominence of Jupiter, not far past the meridian, and perfectly aligned to pull my dob just outside the garage door, able to both reach the focuser and see the screen inside at the same time. With my wife's coffee refilled and the second pot on to brew, "I'm sorry I'm leaving you, I'm off to take a video of Jupiter".

0630 - leaning over the back of the PC in the garage, switching monitor, keyboard and mouse.

I hauled the dob outside, and had a quick visual through my 30mm - looked beautiful, but it was only a glance. I wedged some foam in the lively az bearing and popped a recently modded and as-yet-untested PS3 eye into the focuser, but struggled to find light to focus. I dropped the frame rate, upped the exposure, gain and brightness but no joy. I tried my other camera, but by this time clouds had rolled in and Jupiter was faint to the naked eye.

0650 - lifted the scope off the mount, looked back up - it was clear again!

The scope went straight back on the mount and with 30mm and 11mm EPs in hand, ducked out under the scope... cloudy.

0700 - everything put back.

 

The biggest issues with my dob are finding and tracking. The bearings are not perfect and the finder is poor. Whether the camera is up to it or not - can't see why not - I'll find out another night.

I can't wait to get it one of my 8.5" mirrors finding and tracking a planet, but I've a fair bit of work to get there - patience.

Better go back in and do a nappy or something.

 

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Keeping a finder aligned is way more of a challenge than it would at first appear to be. I've never had much luck with the normal 3 or 6 point screw mountings so I designed an alt az cradle thing for mine. however, to date that hasn't proved much good either so will have to look at significant modifications. One wouldn't expect it to be nearly so hard!

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My finder is a straight-through 10x40 monocular mounted alt-az-ish using a couple of springs and wing-nuts, but too close to the tube. I've also got a red dot, however with the scope sitting right outside the garage door and me being trapped inside, they're on the wrong side and neither of them are accessible.

I really need a laptop and either a larger sensor, some motors or both to continue imaging with this scope.

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