Caught a moon!

[roger jerome]

Hi Folks

I tried a few captures this morning….was quite a bit of dew.  I did get the asi120mc up to 75 fos on som captures. Used a 9.25sct with a 2x barlow. I am finding that using the zoom in Sharpcap helps  me with focussing. I was pleased to see a moon in there.

Thanks for looking

Cheers

Roger

[rickwayne]

Cool! I just started my own first wobbly steps with planetary imaging, I got a moon shadow on Jupiter's disk but no moon.

It's so different from deep-sky work, in particular the total neglect of some things that I obsess over for DSOs. Not easier, just different. Polar alignment? "Squint over top of scope, yeah, that looks about right". Autoguiding? "Punch DEC button on hand controller from time to time". Unattended automation? "Eh, I've been out here for an hour and have a few gig of video, think I'll hit the hay."

It's kind of fun to be a total noob again. Sort of like when I was 40 and an expert skier (Senior Ski Patroller, yada yada) and decided to try snowboarding. "Well (WHAM) I guess that (WHAM! WHAM!) I am learning at least a little bit of (WHAM) humility here."

[roger jerome]

1 hour ago, rickwayne said:

Cool! I just started my own first wobbly steps with planetary imaging, I got a moon shadow on Jupiter's disk but no moon.

It's so different from deep-sky work, in particular the total neglect of some things that I obsess over for DSOs. Not easier, just different. Polar alignment? "Squint over top of scope, yeah, that looks about right". Autoguiding? "Punch DEC button on hand controller from time to time". Unattended automation? "Eh, I've been out here for an hour and have a few gig of video, think I'll hit the hay."

It's kind of fun to be a total noob again. Sort of like when I was 40 and an expert skier (Senior Ski Patroller, yada yada) and decided to try snowboarding. "Well (WHAM) I guess that (WHAM! WHAM!) I am learning at least a little bit of (WHAM) humility here."

This stuff does keep a person humble….so much to learn but I enjoy the occasional Eureka moments.  A good sense of humour such as yours certainly helps

Cheers

Roger

[rickwayne]

What's even more hilarious is that the analogy turned rather too literal Tuesday night, when my chair and I rocked backwards off the deck into the weeds. Got the back feet just a little too close to the edge in the dark, I guess. At least it wasn't like the similar event when my camp chair capsized in soft beach sand -- that one threw me into the telescope, necessitating a polar-alignment do-over.

[Paul M]

That's a very nice moon capture. It amazes me that amateurs can create such images. I remember the fisrt time I resolved a Galilean Moon as a disk visually with my old 6.25" Newt. I was awestruck.

I think neither my eyes nor that scope are up to the challenge now!

 

[Cosmic Geoff]

Out of interest I connected up my ASI120MC camera after a session on Jupiter with the ASI462MC.

The processed results are not much different between the cameras (though the seeing was bad and none of the final images look sharp).  

Found that with Sharpcap 4 the frame rate was a lot slower with the 120MC and the exposure time a lot more, and that the gain for the ASI120MC is variable, with the maximum being 100.

I took a couple of videos with the IR filter and the ASO462MC, which clearly showed up a transiting moon (only its shadow could be seen on the normal shots.)

With the ASI462MC,  5000 frame videos gave a notably better result than 2000 frames. (Finger trouble there).

Edited September 18, 2022 by Cosmic Geoff