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I woke early so went out to the observatory as soon as I had breakfasted. About 7am the Moon still hung fairly high in the SSW. So I aimed for Plato and was shocked to see the central crater continuously visible despite the awful thermal agitation. Plato was 2" across without the WO 2x Barlow and twice that with it on the nose of the ZWO camera seen on the 27" screen in SharpCap. Nothing I tried in Registax helped to obtain an improved image from any of my videos.
Time for my morning walk. I'll see how it all looks later when there is a bit more altitude to play with. There is a low hill to our east so that must affect the seeing. Though the wind is from the west to north west today. Perhaps the wind itself is responsible for the atrocious seeing conditions? Or just a symptom of the weather conditions? The seeing never did improve.
Thursday: I rebuilt the H-alpha telescope. The off axis glare was getting on my nerves. So I dismantled the lot and blacked the shiny bits. The D-ERF cell was still polished stainless steel. Though that was pointing towards the eyepiece end end. So would only receive low intensity reflected light off the front of the etalon condensing lens. The dirty objective was given a wash with lens tissues. Observatories don't protect the bare glass so you should cover it.
Then I arranged two length of timber together. Spaced to simulate the light cone of a 15cm x 120cm focal length. I had been using the 90mm internal D-ERF much too close to the objective. The cell was being illuminated by the bright focused light cone. One complication is the automatic conversion of the 150mm f/8 to f/10 x 120mm. Nevertheless I moved the D-ERF much nearer the etalon until the light cone from the objective fell inside the 90mm diameter. With everything back together I was called in for lunch. More later.
Click on any image for an enlargement.
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