Venus and Saturn 16th Nov

[matt_man21]

Hey i'm new here tho i have been viewing the forum with fascination for some time now.

I recently brought my first scope 'a la ebay' a little second hand skywatcher 4" f5 refractor on an eq2-3 mount and came with a 9.5mm and a 6.3mm plossl and a 2x televue barlow that arrived yesterday.

After figuring out how to use the finder scope and align it with the main scope (i used sirius) i set to the task of of finding Saturn. After a few minuits of buggering about getting used to an equatorial mount i was rewarded with a tiny image of saturn in my eyepiece, This is the first time i have seen a planet first hand and i spent a good 5 min giggling likte a little school girl (not quite beleiving what i was actually seeing) and going 'wow' out loud much to the ammusement of the local hedgehog.

Excitedly i dug out the barlow and again was shocked by the detail i could see you could make out the rings perfectly tho i noticed that every few seconds the image would go blury and out of focus then magicly snap back into focus (it seems get's worse with the higher magnifications so i eased back to try and get the best of both worlds (no pun intended)). By about 5:30am venus was getting higher and so i decided to move the scope down. I can safely say i have never seen anything quite like it before it was like a super bright mini crescent moon (Q: is it normal to see a rainbow either side of the cresent or anything else bright for that matter? ) It was so much bigger than i ever thought it would be! On the down side however i couldn't look at it for too long as it was REALLY bright (akin to being optically assulted by a class 4 laser (my poor retina LoL! ))

This has been the single most thrilling morning i think i have ever experienced! I'm definately getting out there again!

[oldfruit]

Good job bagging 2 planets and Saturn is always a jaw dropper no matter how many times you observe it. The snapping in and out of fucus is the turbulence of the atmosphere and you will notice it more on planets the lower they are as you need to look through more of earths atmosphere when observing. You should get better views when Saturn is higher in a month or two.

[Jake Bullit]

That`s a great first session,you`ll remember the thrill for a long time.

Saw Venus myself this morning with some low powered bins,looked great.

The rainbow effect might be condensation,try and get the scope out in plenty of time to let it cool down.

[Talitha]

Well done and welcome to SGL, Matt!

I think everyone is momentarily stunned by their first view of Saturn, it's so perfect.

Were the 'rainbows' you saw multicolored and sparkling, or were they just fringes of green or purple? If it was a green/purple fringe, it's just the chromatic abberation (CA) which is normal around bright objects when seen through an achromatic refractor.

If they were sparkling, it was the light being refracted by our atmosphere, and i'm guessing it was dancing around a bit in the turbulence... the same turbulence that caused Saturn to pop in and out of focus.

[old codger]

I had the luck to be up about 6am and saw Venus and Saturn low in the East, so I got my 'Grab & Go' 4in Celestron on it's Camera tripod and had a look out of the window. Yes I agree Venus in crescent phase is quite something, nice to see Saturn again - I could'nt bring my self to go outside and seriously observe with my 8in Celestron though , old age and warm bed called me back!

Old Codger

[Nexus 6]

Well done Matt,

to see Saturn must have got you hooked, its such an amazing sight! I agree that you probably had turbulence and CA with the views you were having.

Alan

[davo]

Cool write up too. A very enjoyable read.

[matt_man21]

Cheers for the advice and encouragement people!

True to my word i was back out in the front garden in the early morning of the 19th after furiously sacrificing many cups of coffee to the gods of cloud cover i was finally rewarded with a clear patch at about 5:30 am. This time i had decided to arm myself with appropriate clothing and a creation i affectionately like to call 'Franken-Cam' (I had a rummage though my junk box *see house* and found an old microsoft lifecam that by a small miracle has a nose that fits snugly in a 1.25inch eyepiece holder (even better with a little black electrical tape)) i opened the webcam and removed the tiny screw in lens to reveal the CMOS sensor and after a small dab of black nail polish on the green led i was ready to have my first go at imaging.

I first tried the webcam straight in to my 500mm FL scope and the image was almost unusable, I then remembered that i had a barlow so after 15 min of fiddling about trying to place Saturn in the infantesimaly small FOV of the sensor i was rewarded with a small blurry over exposed imaged of Saturn (crikey! things move out of view quickly:eek:, I am now beginning *sarcasm* to see the rational behind a clock drive) Unfortunately it appears that you can't adjust the exposure or white balance settings with micro$oft drivers:mad:. Focusing was an absolute nightmare due to the amount of backlash in my focuser i'm thinking of getting it close to focus and modifying a micrometer to do the rest as it appears the steep light cone from an f5 scope has a really short focal plane.

Anyway i'm rabbiting on again...

After taking 7 seconds of footage with the webcam (before saturn whizzed out of view) i played arround with registax (with much cursing and blinding this time to the bemusement of my cat (I think the hedgehog is avoiding me nowadays) as i got used to the software and played round with some of the features) and produced this image... My first ever!!! I know that alot of beginners have done a lot better than this but still it's a proud moment for me as i will quite possibly treasure this image for the rest of my life (or untill i take a better one =P ) it also shows the colour fringing i was on about in my last post, after doing a little reading research on optics at the library i'm pretty sure it's CA