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A clear and bright afternoon promised a clear evening with a High Moon. Well, 45° local altitude, anyway.
I practiced my Scottish caber tossing, while it was still daylight, with the heavy refractor and just managed to get it up into the rings on the big mounting. It really is becoming a hefty lump!
There followed much to-ing and fro-ing as I brought out the AWR drive
system electronics and connected it all up. There was a pause for dinner
and then it was dark enough to bring out the laptop.
Everything worked as intended except for I-Cap which had followed Stellarium into nano-text territory. A quick adjustment in the Display menu and stronger reading glasses brought some degree of sanity. Don't ever bother with a UHD screen until they become the norm! Nothing is ready for high resolution screens. Least of all the laptop manufacturers or W10!
Everything worked as intended except for I-Cap which had followed Stellarium into nano-text territory. A quick adjustment in the Display menu and stronger reading glasses brought some degree of sanity. Don't ever bother with a UHD screen until they become the norm! Nothing is ready for high resolution screens. Least of all the laptop manufacturers or W10!
The image above was taken with flash at much too great a distance. The AWR drive stuff is on the pier/stand shelf. While a B&D folding workbench holds the laptop. The AWR IH2 handset and a cardboard mouse mat are on top of stacked storage tubs for a rather low working surface. Workable, but far from ideal in the long term. Some protection from dew would be good. Perhaps that's another reason for building my first observatory at 70 years of age?
My folding wooden chair sits in the background. As is the 12" pipe to which I had fitted a 10" mirror cell only yesterday. It needs an access door but I am loathe to start cutting just in case I think of something else. Like a hinged tailboard?
My folding wooden chair sits in the background. As is the 12" pipe to which I had fitted a 10" mirror cell only yesterday. It needs an access door but I am loathe to start cutting just in case I think of something else. Like a hinged tailboard?
Finally I was able to settle down to trawling the half moon for interesting features using the slower speeds of the AWR stepper motor drives. These are remarkably positive compared with the awful delays on the synchronous drives on the old Fullerscopes MkIV. Having so many speeds to choose from is luxury indeed. I settled on the "Center" rate, which gave excellent control without excessive speed or unwanted overshoot.There is an even lower "crawler gear" with the "Guide" rate.
At frequent intervals, over a couple of hours, I kept taking taking videos with my Neximage 5 video camera. I managed 28 videos in all. Stuck on the end of a 7" f/12 refractor [84" or 2160cm focal length] the 640x480 Y800 setting can hardly manage more than a large crater or two. See image alongside. I left the 2" dielectric star diagonal in place for easy camera and cable access. Though I do have straight extension tubes somewhere for more serious use, if ever needed.
At frequent intervals, over a couple of hours, I kept taking taking videos with my Neximage 5 video camera. I managed 28 videos in all. Stuck on the end of a 7" f/12 refractor [84" or 2160cm focal length] the 640x480 Y800 setting can hardly manage more than a large crater or two. See image alongside. I left the 2" dielectric star diagonal in place for easy camera and cable access. Though I do have straight extension tubes somewhere for more serious use, if ever needed.
There were constant thermal issues superimposed on the image on the laptop screen. The house roof was directly below the Moon and had been absorbing sunshine all day long. Whether this was a factor I had no idea but the mounting is far too heavy to move safely. Nor was there really anywhere else in the garden which would actually improve the situation.
It was too late, last night, to start running my videos through Registax 6. So that will have to wait for today. I'm wondering if I can't transfer them, via Home Group, to my PC fro more comfortable treatment. Nope! Windows has also dropped free file transfer between computers. So I used a USB sick instead. Only to find the video files were corrupted or would not open. So it was back to the laptop. That Registax was able to extract anything from the violently shaking mush is not far short of a miracle!
I haven't done any imaging for ages so will have to re-learn all the settings of this clever software. I have no idea if I even have anything worth processing. There are far too many options for a beginner, like myself. The image above was one of my efforts after a spin cycle through Registax.The last thing I noticed, as I packed up, was that the polar altitude of the mounting had drooped. The telescope was no longer pointing at the Pole Star. Grrr? I really must attend to the altitude adjustment. The plate against which it pulls is poorly fixed at the top.
I looked up the details of my refractor fitted with a 7mm webcam sensor. So with a FL of 2160mm my 7" refractor has a magnification of 308x via the Neximage 5. It is no wonder the field of view is so small! The magnification provided is the focal length in millimeters divided by 7[mm]. A binocular objective of only 120mm focal length gives 17x via the Neximage 5 but the distant views still look huge! The downside of these huge magnifications and small field of view is trying to capture whole disks of the Moon or Sun with a long focal length telescope. Not to mention the magnification of any air turbulence. Planets need these large magnifications to provide reasonable image scale. Shorter telescopes would need Barlow lenses to have any impact on tiny, planetary images.
I haven't done any imaging for ages so will have to re-learn all the settings of this clever software. I have no idea if I even have anything worth processing. There are far too many options for a beginner, like myself. The image above was one of my efforts after a spin cycle through Registax.The last thing I noticed, as I packed up, was that the polar altitude of the mounting had drooped. The telescope was no longer pointing at the Pole Star. Grrr? I really must attend to the altitude adjustment. The plate against which it pulls is poorly fixed at the top.
I looked up the details of my refractor fitted with a 7mm webcam sensor. So with a FL of 2160mm my 7" refractor has a magnification of 308x via the Neximage 5. It is no wonder the field of view is so small! The magnification provided is the focal length in millimeters divided by 7[mm]. A binocular objective of only 120mm focal length gives 17x via the Neximage 5 but the distant views still look huge! The downside of these huge magnifications and small field of view is trying to capture whole disks of the Moon or Sun with a long focal length telescope. Not to mention the magnification of any air turbulence. Planets need these large magnifications to provide reasonable image scale. Shorter telescopes would need Barlow lenses to have any impact on tiny, planetary images.
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