December 2nd 2011

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Another clear evening with occasional plates of cloud passing over. Half moon to the south. Jupiter rising steeply in the east.

6" F:8 Celestron CR150HD refractor on Fullerscopes MkIV mounting. Stopped down to 4" F:12. Afocal image using 20mm no-name Plossl. Sony P71 camera hand-held to eyepiece. No drives running. Cropped, Contrast and Gamma adjusted in PhotoFiltre to bring out detail away from the terminator. 37F. Heavy dew. Thermal effects clearly visible. Moon just above house roof and chimney.

I fitted the black foam into the extended dewshield to kill internal reflections.

Still struggling with dewing of the back of the objective.

The Panasonic TZ7 camera is still failing to capture decent images. This is a snap using a 15mm Meade Plossl. Heavy vignetting, tiny field of view and too high a contrast. Heavily cropped and adjusted in PhotoFiltre. I found a description online of this problem being related to using wide angle camera lens settings. Using a slight amount of zoom may help.