Blonde Moment Moon

[mightymonoped]

Put this on here to vent.....

Got up at 6:00 am after seeing the Moon through my bedroom window. Gotta get it, gotta get it.

Ok, I've got half an 20 mins before normal morning school-madness begins......

Got everything pretty much waiting to plonk outside the conservatory..laptop booted...webcam in...image on screen.....TOO BRIGHT (I'd moved all the control's way back to compensate for the fact that the last image I took was of the Sun)...OK, bring down the gain....gain goes down...and down....still too bright...dammit, I running out of time, will have to capture it as it is....

....half an hour later, driving my eldest lad to the bus-stop to catch his bus to college...Duh! Just needed to make the shutter speed faster!!!! I was moving it in the wrong direction...how annoying is it when you have the perfect imaging moment and screw it up in a moment of early morning zombiness

Here's the best I could salvage... (reduced 50% to prevent people being blinded :-)

Tony

[Kaptain Klevtsov]

I thought nearly all imaging was like that?

Can't remember the number of times I've sat here in the morning with a coffee in the half hour before work and realised what I'd done wrong. There's always a next time though.

At least its not as depressing as say, videoing a tower block being blown up, or a transit / eclipse video going wrong.

Captain Chaos

[Caz]

Considering the circumstances Tony, you did well...

I wouldn't even dream of trying to image before school time... :shock: I'm bound to make mistakes, due to the ticking of time!

Caz

[Caz]

Oops forgot to take these off...

Caz

[Astroman]

Try this one, Tony. I'm on Mauna Kea at 9,600 ft altitude. I've "commandeered" a 14" SCT. I've got one frame left on my SLR. Figured I'd piggyback on wide-field. Set shutter speed to "B", place camera on the OTA just to track, open the shutter for 10 minutes. Got the film back, there are 3 stars on the frame. 3. Finally figured out much later that I'd left the aperture open at F/22. Would have needed another couple hours exposure on that one. :insects1:

At least you know the Moon will be back next month. A return to Mauna Kea is a bit farther off. 8)

[mightymonoped]

I think that one goes in the 'Greek (or should it be Hawaiian) Tragedy' catagory

On the subjectof Mauna Kea, guess who has to pay for his eldest son (who isn't in the elast bit interested in astronomy) to go on a Geography 'A' level field trip to Hawaii (and the observatories) next year

Tony

[GazOC]

Christ. All we did was draw graphs showing the rainfall in New Dehli.

[Astroman]

Ouch. We spent a small fortune, king's ransom on that trip, and I even got a NASA travel grant! Best of luck.