Jupiter 22nd July - impossibly good frame rates!

[Tommohawk]

Well I was experimenting with a new set up area down the end of our road  (a quiet cul-de-sac) because I cant see much south from my garden. The neighbours kindly hooked up power for me and I even managed to work around the 4000kW LED streetlight that some lunatic has installed. I managed to screen myself from this by leaving the car hatchback open with  a blanket over it - see pic.

No way of seeing the pole star though, partly because it was quite early and partly because my retinae had just been lasered by the street light. So I started in neutral park position, slewed to Jupiter and then fiddled with the alignment of the mount to bring Jupiter into view. I got fairly close but still the drift was bad and I didn't think I could get away with using the x5 powermate. But time was running out and there was still no sign of the pole star.

So - in with the powermate, crank up the gain to locate the defocused halo, and Bob's your uncle, Jupiter in the frame. Drifting like mad, but doable. Surpisingly I seemed to have an uber-bright image so quickly adjusted the exposure for R G and B and still achieving well over 300fps on each filter. Image looked a bit mushy but what with the street lamp and everything, perhaps no surprise. Lovely image runs, 3x 120 secs on RG and B. Had to stop only because the colossal frame rate had swallowed over 120GB of hard drive!

Too good to be true? … well yes of course it was! Somehow the filterwheel hadn't connected so all the exposures were either luminance or open ie no filter at all. I spent ages today trying to work out what had gone wrong before the penny dropped. Had to trash the lot.

So hopefully things will be clear for Wednesday night - no transit, but at least the GRS should be on show. 

 

 

[Davey-T]

All good practice Tom, did you sort your spacing ?

Dave

[Tommohawk]

Just now, Davey-T said:

All good practice Tom, did you sort your spacing ?

Dave

Hi Dave - the Varilock works a treat (mustn't forget I haven't paid you for it yet!) but TBH I'm still having some issues with star shapes with that scope - bit of a long story, I'll bore you with it another time!

As you say all good practice!

[Pete Presland]

The "L" channel still would have been worth processing to be honest. Live and learn we have all been there 🙂