1st Lunar with auto dob April 12th

[Space Cowboy]

Wasn't sure whether it was worth posting these as conditions were very hazy (Saturn was almost wiped out).

Anyhow these are my first serious lunar shots with the auto dob at f27. They are a bit dark and not as sharp as would be produced on a clearer night though seeing was ok.

[bm1980]

Nice close ups stuart, not bad for the hazy conditions

Regards

Ben

[neil phillips]

Hi Stuart well done on your first hi res lunar. wobbly seeing foccusing collimation. will all impact the blur factor, but knowing what you have been doing, it seems likely its mostly seeing. haveing said that. when seeing will not support f27. its often worth coming down a bit, then spending time getting focussing as razor sharp as is possible. then by capturing at least 3 thousand frames. 5 or 600 can be stacked to beat seeing. i know your using 10 fps. so it will take long per capture, i was shooting at 30 fps and collecting between 4 and 7000 frames. to weed out the calm parts ( often 6 or 700 frames ) from those high frame captures. im sure you know most of this. but being new to lunar so to speak. thought it might be worth discussing. Good first attempts well done

[Space Cowboy]

Thanks Ben!

Cheers Neil!

I'd got everything set up for Saturn so thought I'd see how the tracking etc handled the moon at f27 (6.5 metres). The longest I did with the skymax was 4.5 m so this was quite a hike and one of the main reasons I got the bigger scope. Tracking was not desperate but could have been better though it looks like reg v6 can handle aligning twitchy frames better than v5..although without being able to see the alignment box during optimization (v6 no longer has this step) I cannot say for certain. The middle image was from over 3000 frames but extra frames as you say Neil are more for dodgy seeing than hazy visibility. Will be interesting to see what results I get under good conditions but sadly I seem to use the moon as an afterthought when conditions are too poor for the planets.