One of those rare occasions when I dragged myself outside to take a few snaps of The Moon. I should have done it last night but didn't. Tonight was cloudy. Last night was not.
The ammoniacal stench of pig shit from the surrounding fields made me breathless. Requiring that I discard my clothes in the hallway at the end of my photographic session at the telescope. Until it rains or they stop overloading the fields with industrial quantities of liquid pig manure nothing will change.
There has been a drought so the weekend pig farmers seem to want to irrigate with foul-smelling slurry and cheap scent instead. We daren't open any windows or the whole house will stink. Our clothes stink just from going outside for a few minutes. We don't even live near a pig farm! The pass us from opposite directions to spread their filth all around us. Welcome to the reality of industrialised, EU taxpayer subsidised, Danish Bacon!
It was this cloudy but still worth persevering for the clearer and brighter moments. There were obvious thermal effects in the image from the hot roof lying beneath the moon. It had been sunny all day with a 72F high. Warmest day this year. I could have moved the mounting but it is very hard work.
I started off with my old Sony P71 for its reliable astro snaps. Simply hand held up to the eyepiece and centred as usual. I used the 2" star diagonal, turned sideways, to help cope with the high altitude of the moon.(otherwise I couldn't see the camera's viewing screen)
Two images cropped and turned to B&W to kill the false colour. I was using my 6" F:8 refractor on the MkIV with the drives running. A Baader Fringe Killer filter was screwed into the eyepiece. (A 26mm Meade 4000 Plossl)
Second image using the Sony P71 on auto.
Now the Panasonic DSC TZ7. I haven't previously had much luck with this camera hand held to the eyepiece. Tonight it seemed to work but the field of view was very small. I tried all sorts of zoom settings without success. Centring the image in the viewfinder screen was much more difficult than with the old Sony. I folded down the rubber eye shield, of course.
Another shot using the TZ7 and a different crop to make the most of the best part of the image. All images were simply processed through PhotoFiltre to improve contrast and detail. Away from the terminator things were always totally overexposed. Increasing gamma and contrast usually made things much worse. Reducing them improved detail on the terminator but made everything much darker.
These were the best from a batch of about 40 snaps. Most of which were relatively useless. It was worth persevering to obtain a couple of fairly decent shots between the clouds.
I'm not particularly proud of these images but wanted to remind myself that fair results were possible using simple means. The MKIV is massive and steady so allows the luxury of hand held snaps without camera shake. The visible detail was exquisite compared with these rather soft, much enlarged shots. Any attempt to use a 15mm eyepiece was usually wasted. I even tried the "Shorty" 2x Barlow but things went very soft indeed. Perhaps I need to try a 2" eyepiece?
Here's the result of further attempts the following night. Still using the TZ7 on auto 2. 20mm no-name Plossl with the Baader Fringe Killer filter. It clouded over at intervals while I experimented with different camera settings for a couple of hours. (including EV adjustment) I have cheated and added a touch of sharpening to these images to make them appear more crisp.
These images are slightly darker than I would have liked. I found that any adjustment to brighten immediately lost all detail in the brighter parts of the moon's surface away from the terminator.
It was a waste of time doing photography while the sky was still bright because it just fogged the image. At this time of year the sky is still fairly light at 10pm. (55N) Still plenty of thermal effects even though I had moved the MkIV to clear the heat rising from the roof. Though the moon had moved well over the roof ridge by the time I called it a night at 11pm.
It shows how light the sky was because I only noticed Saturn a little to the East just before I packed up. It seemed very small and the seeing was rather mobile. A few of its moons were visible. I didn't spend much time on it but the rings looked quite sharp without the Cassini Division being the usual easy target. I was using 60X at the time but going up to 120x didn't help in the poor seeing.
This Danish amateur's observatory is looking smart with a new coat of paint. It enjoys an enviable situation overlooking a lush green valley. Entirely home built the dome contains a home-made 10" reflector. (including the mirror)
After Google had lost my update, in their own update fiasco, I found it cached online and copied and pasted it back. The missing post has not been restored.
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