27.11.2020 Sun and moon.

 *

Friday 27th. Overnight frost followed by pretty, low lying mist. 

10.30 40/38F Clear with bright sunshine. D-ERF and objective misted over. Set dew bands going and used hair drier. Can't reach the back of the objective.  I may need to make an access door in the main tube. Image still soft due to 4" mist spot on objective. 

Went over to White Light with the 90/11 Vixen and Lunt 1.25" with 2x GPC and Baader Solar Continuum filter. Some thermal image movement but better than H-a at the moment.

11.45 45/40F. The 150/10 had interstitial dew which is proving very slow to clear. One dew band at 80F at half way setting. Dew spot down to 25mm. The lead on one of the dew bands is hot to the touch! 94F inside the band! This is now at 1/4 setting. I think there must be a fault. The other band's lead is cold.

12.12 The seeing was so bad in H-alpha that I removed the GPC. Still too soft! Solar altitude 13.5°. The view on the monitor is so bad that I keep refocusing. Which makes it worse until I correct it.

Evening lunar imaging session: in poor seeing. Just like the sun, earlier in the day,  the image was soft and simmering.

I kept increasing the power of the GPC to see if anything changed. Of course it didn't. Making a soft image larger doesn't achieve anything.

There is just a hint of the central crater in Plato in some of the images.

I was obviously wasting my time expecting anything better this evening. So I packed up before 8.00 and prepared for dinner.

 

 

 

*