5 planets and first light with ASI462MC

[Cosmic Geoff]

Tried out my newly arrived ASI462MC + IR-cut filter, in my CPC800 + ADC for some planetary imaging.  (no Barlow used)

First off, I will say that if you bought one of these without buying a IR-cut filter to go with it, you need to get one as, without the IR-cut, the colours (e.g. through the fisheye lens) look crazy as the IR response is so strong. 

Images captured with Sharpcap 4, mostly as 5000-frame video, and processed in Registax. Some images were taken with an IR-pass filter.  The difference in exposure time between IR-pass and IR-cut filters is notably less than with a ASI224MC.  The planetary images look bigger than with an ASI224MC because the ASI462MC pixels are smaller (!).

The seeing did not seem good and the sky was hazy. I could barely see Neptune in the 50mm finder and earlier in the evening struggled to get good focus when deep sky imaging with a wider field instrument.  Overall the results are a little disappointing except that the Mars IR image has come out well and Uranus looks like, well, Uranus.  The Neptune shot, processed from a short stream of video with 50ms exposures, has not worked at all and I am wondering why. 

[Cosmic Geoff]

In the evening of the 6th I compared the star image quality of the CPC800 against my C8 SE, using the same diagonals and eyepieces.  C8 SE clearly gave a less untidy image. Had a go at tweaking the collimation of the CPC800, which seemed to improve the star image. 

Imaged Saturn and a small object - results below.

[Pete Presland]

Nice start with your new camera