Neximage Problems

[Marcus daniel]

Im outside right now and have aligned for saturn, i can see it perfectly through eye pieces but not at all using my neximage. Is this because saturn is stil too far away, have tried my 2x barlow but still no image appears...... help!!!

[Glider]

Your Neximage is effectively a 6mm eyepiece (EP), if you include a Barlow it is entirely possible that the effective field of view (FOV) is so small that in changing from the EP to the camera the planet has gone completely out of view.

Center the planet with say a 25mm EP, then go to a 10mm EP and recentre, then add a 2x Barlow to the 10mm EP and recentre. Then put the camera in.

[Marcus daniel]

Thanks glider will try that out, have been touring the skies tonight, its my scopes first proper light since i bought it 2 weeks ago. Have seen galaxies, nebulas, double stars, been well busy, have driven the missus mad with keep saying "come here look at this" the wonders of the universe, how can you ever get bored of looking up, theres so much to see and do !!

[Glider]

In that case I'd forget the camera and enjoy the views whilst they last.

[Demonperformer]

You should be able to get some good shots of Saturn with neximager and 6SE. I would second Glider's advice about using e/p+barlow and then swapping e/p for neximager, for some reason I always find the holder does not line the neximager up the same way as an e/p and have to re-centre the object.

[brianb]

Saturn is pretty faint in a webcam ... you need to set a long exposure (about 1 sec) to have any chance of seeing its "donut" if it's significantly out of focus. Best to practice on the moon so you know how much to change the focus & in which direction from your "favourite" eyepiece so you can get close to accurate focus straight away.

A very accurately aligned finder with reasonable magnification is useful for guiding the planet onto the very small field of a webcam. 9x50 is just about sufficient at 2 metres focal length.

[Marcus daniel]

Yeh I hear what your saying, but the odd thing was that I was tracking it and had the image in view with the barlow but still couldn't locate the dam thing on screen. Have imaged jupiter before with the old scope (114lcm) using the neximage without problems, is this just down to me getting used to the new scopes depth of field ? ( Thank you all so far )

[Demonperformer]

The 6SE has a much longer focal length, so the fov in the neximager is much smaller. There is therefore a much bigger chance of Saturn being just outside its fov.