Moon and Copernicus

[Darth Takahashi]

Attached is an image of the cater Copernicus, seeing was good but unfortunately the transparency was poor.

The image was taken with Mewlon M250 and my HX916 Starlight Xpress ccd in infrared light using an infrared pass filter. Its very challenging using a 3000mm focal length scope under such conditions. Let's hope the weather improves!

(click to enlarge)

Hope you enjoy the image.

Neil.

[MartinB]

Looks pretty good to me Neil. Can I swap weather with you please!

Do you prefer using the 916 to a web cam type imager?

[Darth Takahashi]

I have a standard Phillips SP900 web-cam but I wanted to see what I could do with the HX916. I thought the extra resolution might help. However, with subjects like the moon you right in that web-cams and Registax rule!

You can find some web-cam images taken with my M250 at the following link;

http://www.astroforum.nl/maanmozaik-ii-t16611.html

My friend Bert came over with his modified Phillips 840k web-cam, it has a monochrome chip.

The weather is changing this weekend and not for the better, never mind its seems that I'm just now getting your weather, thanks!!!

[MartinB]

Those images are wonderful. I think the small pixel size of web cams means they can deliver a higher res than most CCDs quite apart from the AVI mode.

Looking forward to seeing some more Mewlon images Neil. There is quite a bit of interest in these scopes on here. I've heard they are tricky to collimage.

[barkis]

Your pic. looks great, Copernicus is a favourite lunar feature of mine, and you did a good job on it.

I've had a look at your friend Bert's images too Neil, and indeed they are exceptional.

I own the MX916 camera too. I also have a DMK Imaging camera, but as yet I have not used either.

That will l change soon though.

Thanks.

Ron.

[Darth Takahashi]

MartinB, I haven't needed to collimate the M250 yet. I brought it back from Japan myself and the star test went very well. The only real problem I can already see with collimation is that the weather here isn't really good enough to use a real star. I'm going to make an artificial star with some fibre optic cable, then the problem will be to get it in line of sight at some 60 meters distance!!! Anyway, the good news is that they hold collimation well. I have had a second hand M210 which I sold to fund the new M250. The reason is the the M250 focuses using the secondary, once focused it stay put which is great for imaging.

Ron, Bert's own scope is a TAL200 which he has greatly improved, collimation and back focus. He already gets some great results with this scope so when I tolded him I was out with the M250 he came around to test it out! Actually, I wanted to borrow his IR pass filter etc... I'm going to try my web-cam when I can but its the colour version, no mods!

Thanks for the comments, Neil.

[Coco]

Wow nice and close ...

Very nice.