Spring has sprung the Moon is riz...

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Clear skies and improving temperatures brought me outside again with the CR150 6" F8 refractor on the MkIV mounting. The image still looked nicely sharp at 160x though I couldn't see any craterlets within Plato.There were some thermal, rippling effects. Probably because I was looking straight over the roof which had been warmed by almost continuous sun all day.

Here are some hand held snaps taken last night with my old Sony P71 set to infinity. I simply held up the camera to a 15mm Meade SP 4000 EP with the rubber eye cup rolled down. Then aligned the camera to get the maximum field of view on the tiny viewing screen.The telescope had already been sharply visually focussed and the Vixen 2" focuser locked. The drives on the MkIV were running. I normally wear reading glasses so there may be some slight loss of perfect focus for the camera.

A cropped shot of the one above. Plato is the large, dark-floored crater near the top. The sharp eyed will notice a slight greeny-yellow fringe at top left. This is a colour photograph, after all, despite the monochromatic appearance of the lunar surface. A Baader "Fringe Killer" filter was fitted in the eyepiece but visually I could still see violet on the limb at 160x. Though not in the lunar shadows. Quite a pleasing shot for a simple hand-held snap. I chose the best of about twenty shots then downsized it in PhotoFiltre for the blog. Click on the image for a 140kB enlargement.

Occasional vignetting is possible when using hand-held cameras at the eyepiece.

My attempts to use my much more sophisticated Panasonic Lumix TZ7 in the same way as the Sony was a total disaster, yet again. I'm wondering whether there is a setting which equates to infinity lock in the complex camera menus. Or some way of neutralising AF. I can't even get a reasonable image on the 3" focussing screen. Let alone a usable image to upload to the computer.

I must try to persevere with solving this problem because the TZ7 can manage very much higher resolution than the old Sony. It also has IS (Image Stabilisation) I tried several pre-programmed "modes" on the TZ7 but it made no difference. There is no need to experiment with the Lumix at the telescope in the dark. I can more easily try different settings on terrestrial objects with a small telescope on a fixed tripod. 

Meanwhile, Venus was a very bright colourful blob just dipping between the local larch trees. Mercury was already out of sight. Mars was just a tiny colourful blob but Saturn was much better. Being slightly higher than last time. The thin black line was even more sharply defined and several moons could be seen. The rings were more obviously open rather than a straight skewer piercing Saturn. The moons were not at all sharp or even continuously visible.
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