Think Imager!

[jaquesnoir]

Hi,

I was imaging Saturn last night with my NexImage camera. I had my NexStar set up with laptop etc. After a feeble over-exposed previous attempt I decided to use a light polution filter that my wife bought me at xmas from from FLO and a 2x barlow. This time I actually adjusted the brightness and gain settings in Amcap and then spent about 20 minutes trying to find the flippin planet. When I eventually found it I had difficulty keeping in the centre of the frame because it was so large but eventually after about 20 more minutes adjusting settings I started the camera rolling.

Now - has anyone else ever experienced this?

After 30 seconds rolling the cam a motorbike drove down our road. Bearing in mind there is a row of houses between my scope and the road which is about 20 metres away, as the bike went past the sound caused such bad vibration that the picture on screen looked worse than when I was focussing. The whole image shook all over the screen until the bike was gone.

I had to abandon the run and start again.

A little while later during another image run a very small moth hit the side of the scope and nearly shook the planet out of frame!

I never realised how sensitive these optical devices of ours are. I can see why a sheltered observatory is so attractive to imagers apart from keeping the cold out.