It's Sunday morning here for me; I hope you are having a relaxing day off as well.
Friday and Saturday have seen the temperature shoot up here. We've gone from below freezing on Thursday to 15C (`60F) starting Friday morning. With that came cloudless skies and the promise of a few good viewing nights, at least according to Cleardarksky.com. Unfortunately, the forecast didn't take into account the moisture from the melting snow and ice.
Friday night was indeed clear. Or was it? Looking to the west at about 8:30PM, I could see Orion. On a clear night I can easily pick out the nebula, as well as the Pleiades to the right of that. Tonight, it all looked fuzzy, for lack of a better term. The setting quarter Moon didn't help, but it was a nice view coupled with Mars just over 5 degrees to the right of it. I was going to bring out my orange-tube C80 to see all that and try and pick out some Messiers, but decided it wasn't worth the effort. Too much of a melt here. All that lower atmosphere moisture was making for a soupy view.
But I wanted to do something. It's been so long since I've taken a scope out...! On that note, I went and got my C80-HD (
I hooked up my Canon 550D (T2i) to the C80 and took 20 pictures of the Moon at ISO 800 and 1/640, 1/800 and 1/1000th sec exp respectively. I then did the same with the Towatron, but at exposures of 1/320, 1/500, and 1/640th seconds. I tried to run both stacks through ImPPG and Registax, but all that did was bring out the "moisture faults", as I call them. So these are only done with PIPP and AS3. The stack from the 60mm is really bad; I like this scope better for single exposures.
The temperature was starting to drop about this time; it was almost 9:30. I was feeling a bit of a damp chill so I thought to wrap it up. I took in the C80, and went back out to get my Towatron with the camera still in it. I stepped out the back door, looked to the west, and saw the rapidly moving bright light rising... You guessed it, the
On a whim, I grabbed the Towatron, ran to the back of the yard, turned on the camera and pointed the scope at where I figured the
I really wish the pictures had some earthbound object in them for a "reference point", but sadly they don't. This is the three images stacked; it starts from the left and about a second has passed during this:
And this is one of the pics at 400X. Somewhere in those pixels is the Crew Dragon.....
- ISS_400X.jpg (1.97 KiB) Viewed 1690 times
After all that, I brought in the Towatron and pretty much went to bed; I was tired.
Last night (Saturday) was a repeat of Friday, so soupy out. Still, I decided to take some pics of the Moon again, but this time with my Sears No4_6331 60mm at 700mm focal length (
One thing about these old refractor scopes is this: Even though they came with .965" diagonals/eyepieces, I have discovered the outside diameter of the focuser tube is exactly 1.25". They all come with a drawtube, and that's where the .965" stuff happens. So, take out the drawtube, cut a piece of 2mm plastic to fit around the focuser tube, wrap it with duct tape, and there's your adapter. I used the barrel from an old 1.25 plossl eyepice for an extension tube that goes between the focuser and eyepiece/camera to bring it all to focus. Since all this has machined straight edges, it's a simple matter to butt it all up and tighten with hose clamps. I tighten those with a 1/4 nut driver instead of a flathead screwdriver as well. Just does a better job on that; more of a feel so you know it's right on the money
If you're wondering if that is the counterweight and rod are from an
I tried a few exposure settings on the Moon at ISO 800, and 1/500th of a second worked out the best. At the time I was taking those, my camera battery ran out, so I only got 11 shots. Worse still, the haze was picking up... Out of 11 pictures, I could only stack 4 of them. This is the result of that. Again, any post-processing only made it worse, so this is only with PIPP and AS3:
This morning is clear and not as humid. Might make for a nicer night if it holds... I took a look to see what the Sun was up to today; there's a new spot emerging off the left of the disc that I can't see, and AR2810 is pretty much gone.
Time for more coffee and something to eat
Have a great day/night all!
