A new recruit

[johnfosteruk]

A friend, colleague and rather good photographer, Chris has been making noises generally indicative of envy when looking at some of my Lunar images for some time, and last week he told me he'd bagged a bargain. A Bresser Messier AR102-1000 on an Exos 1 mount, would I be interested in a trip out at the weekend? Well of course. Full Moon but that's ok - the Moon was his main focus and I do love a bit of lunar.

We picked a location between us on the edge of Dartmoor, and met at about 8pm, I got there first and was setup with the 130 newt, had a nice view of Venus setting in the West behind a bank, the crescent large, but very fine now and bright. When he arrived we setup his new toy. It's nice, the OTA feels lighter than my evostar 102 and the focuser doesn't have the same outward travel but it's solid enough for his Nikon D7200 and has a spacer, although getting the right mix of spacing with a barlow took some time  The mount is strange in that the slow motion controls are excellent, I didn't detect any backlash but open the clutches and pull the tube around and it's a little stiff. Once you're aligned and pointed at your target though the slo-mo does the job nicely. Good for a bargain.

I talked him through polar alignment after he set it up with the mount's north side pointing straight at the moon, then we aligned his finder and popped an EP in, kit one that he got with the Bresser, 25mm plossl and there he was in heaven poring over the eastern limb looking for the last vestiges of detail, the libration showing some nice features not often seen, Humboldtianum, Marginis etc

Meanwhile I'd recorded a short clip of the moon drifting on the newt and switched over to the Evostar for some full disk imaging. We popped the 8mm in the Bresser and the disk is filling the view, but Chris wanted to get on to the main attraction, imaging. Chris was devastated to see some pretty hefty CA at first but the moon was low and the seeing not too good. An hour later and the CA was much reduced and palatable, for a bargain...

He hooked up the 7200, focussed and was snapping away, me snapping away beside him. I've overwhelmed him with links to processing software, can't wait to see his face if (when really) he decides to do DSO (told him the price of a Mesu and he fell over)

I was keen to give him a tour of the deep sky in between imaging and questions, even with the full moon there's stuff to see. Some open clusters of course, M44 was pretty, M45 and the Hyades too, the double cluster, Beehive all elicited some wows and double takes with the naked eye, even with the poor contrast of the full moon sky. Nebulosity in M42 was faint but detectable and impressed nonetheless, the trapezium well resolved.

Some more lunar imaging, working out the spacing with his weird focuser and my 2xGSO but we got there in the end. 

Then he asked about planets. Delighted to learn that Jupiter would be appearing from behind the bank in about ten minutes.

We waited, we watched, we crouched, we stretched and sure as eggs is eggs and the celestial sphere appears to rotate day after day out Jupiter popped between two shrubs on the bank. We were both pointed roughly on target, so a little adjustment later and Chris was delighted. Callisto, Europa and Ganymede were in a really interesting configuration and a nice shadow transit to boot. We took it up to 112.5x with the 8mm hyperion in the newt and although the seeing and the contrast were poor it was lovely to see an old friend. Chris captured some video with the 7200 on the Messier and after appropriate warnings about the difficulties of planetary imaging with a DSLR he was certain he was going to produce a wonder, which he will, but.... baby steps.

One last sweep with wide binos to take in views of Orion setting and it was off home at a decent 12am on a school night and Chris is a happy bunny. His interest has always seemed to be in taking big shiny moon photos but last night the seed was planted for observing as well I think, he asked for a demo using the planisphere that came with the scope and was keen to take it in when I went off on an astro tangent. 

A good night. Next trip with Chris will be at new moon I think.

 

A quick photie I captured before I left home at 200mm.

[Astro Imp]

Lovely report John.

Good to set another enthusiast on the right path.

Enjoy your next trip with your buddy.