2021 Aug 14-15 A tour of the solar system with a TS130 Photoline, an EQ-G and an ASI224MC..

[cathalferris]

I've not been terribly busy with the astro stuff in recent months, with various work-related things and also having moved to Switzerland from Ireland. I'm a bit out of practice too.

Last week, one of my friends here in .ch gave me a lend of his Orion Atlas EQ-G mount, as he was not getting the use of it. I don't have the permission to disassemble it (yet) but I was asked to give it a bit of tune-up. My friend knows it'll get back to him in a better state than he got it in.. The mount was slightly binding on the worms, and needed a little bit of tuning with the worm positioning. Not that hard of a job. It's one of the mounts that has the 9-pin d-sub handset connectors, so it's not a new mount. I suspect it's one of the first European examples of the EQ-G. I have a Synscan handset in preparation for the arrival of my AZ-GTi, whenever TS get their shipments from China, and I obtained the right cable to attach the handset to the EQ-G, both to test the mount and to see if the handset actually worked or not.. I have also borrowed the EQ-DIR cable to see what all that fuss is about

Last night, being a clear Saturday night, with a nice air temp of ~25-20 degrees, and few clouds, it all suggested that it might be a good night to spend out on the balcony with various bits of equipment. I chose the night to familiarise myself with the EQ-G, and also to try the TS130 triplet for planet video capture, see how it performed. I put the Pegasus Astro motorfocus on the TS130 Photoline triplet apo, and mounted that on the EQ-G. The main camera for imaging this evening wasthe second ASI224MC I have, with the help of a ZWO ADC and a 2x Televue barlow. I put my 50mm guidescope+ASi224 guidecamera on the apo to act as an electronic finder, as well as an ordinary right-angle finderscope. I did the polar align with the Synscan handset as I do not have view of the Pole from the balcony. (My AVX and Starsense plus the Celestron ASPA really helps out with that mount.) Setup was issue free. I used my Pegasus Astro Powerbox (v1) with the mount and scope, plugging both of my ASI224 cameras into the USB hub, as well as the EQDIR cable. I needed this box to run the motorfocuser.

Seeing was moderately poor to be honest, not a great night to try and get useful planet data. Still, it was worth setting stuff up. I had great fun pointing and focusing and generally getting familiar with things, and I got enough video to show these:

About 25 min of Jupiter, 3 min videos at 97fps, 320x200 capture area, 1/125 sec exposure I think, 300 gain (iirc) on the camera, and I get this reversing Gif from that data:

Then I tried Saturn, exact same optical setup, but instead now going with 1/30 second instead of the 1/125 from Jupiter. Nothing spectacular, but pretty enough:

Then I remembered Neptune was in the area, so I took a 3 min video of that:

Then, late into the night as it was almost setting, I remembered that Pluto existed and was a thing that was above the horizon, so I pointed the scope (removing the ADC) to Pluto, and I started taking 4 second exposures for a live stack. 2m48s later I had this on screen, I added the labels I got from Cartes du Ciel, just so I could be definite about which red smudge was actually Pluto. This is far from pretty, very noisy and a terrible image, but it is an image that has Pluto in it, taken with a 130mm scope from my balcony. I'm quite happy with that even if the aesthetics are poor:

I call this a successful evening, and a validation of a proof of concept I was curious about regarding the usability of the TS130 for planetary capture. I do have a resurrected-from-the-dead CPC800 that might give better planetary stuff, but I do like how contrasty the Jupiter captured looked on screen.

The EQ-G gave me an insight into why people like using mounts that are too big for their equipment. I found it to be very stable, not too badly affected by people moving in the apartment building as I put three Aliexpress-sourced vibration pads under the tripod and they work very well indeed. The EQMod stuff is interesting for sure, and I think I may end up getting myself an AZ-EQ6 or something in the future. I also think I'll be selling onwards my 12" Dob and my Quattro 8" scope, the Dob is just not best suited to upper floor apartment life and the TS130 will give me similar captures with a flatter field than the Quattro. I'll hold on to the CPC800 as it's in such poor physical condition I couldn't sell it anyway. Feels weird to consider pruning out some of the hardware

A very successful and enjoyable night, and I'm happy with how the evening went with the testing of the equipment, and I'm also reasonably chuffed with the quality possible with a 130mm scope in mediocre seeing; bodes well for nights of steady skies..

[Aussie Dave]

A good nights imaging cathalferris by the looks of it, good capture of Neptune too. Those outer planets can be tricky.

 

[Pete Presland]

Super set of images, great tour of the Solar system.