I’ve had the 9.25″ Celestron SCT for several months now and have now added a new (to me) CGEM DX mount. I picked that up one week ago today on November 14th. Much like the mouse and the cookie I fund I need more. For example, I had to replace the Vixen style dovetail on my SCT with a Losmandy style dovetail so I could attach it to the mount. I had to get a second one to attach the guide scope and autoguider (bought with mount). I also bought a JMI NGF-S remote focuser and Shoestring Astronomy FCUSB so that I can focus the scope from my laptop. Problem with that is I didn’t count on the motor running into the scope’s focus knob so I’ve had to order an SCT thread extension which has not arrived yet. Once I have that I hope to be able to achieve really good focus. Maybe even autofocus though I’ve encountered a 32 bit v 64 bit driver conflict with that software. I picked up up a 2″ DSLR adapter so I plan to start doing DLSR deep sky photography along with the planetary imaging I occasionally do.
Uranus and Neptune October 10, 2015
Saturday night was very clear and steady so after the CAAS meeting I set up my camera to capture these two so called “ice giants”. Everything worked well from tracking, to focus, to imaging. Unfortunately they are both dim and small so there is little detail to show but as you can see they both show disks and similar colors. I’ve placed Uranus on the left and Neptune on the right. Both images are to the same scale, prime focus in a 2350 mm focal length SCT. Uranus was taken at best 50% of 500 100 ms frames while Neptune was taken at 250 ms. Of course, besides similar color the obvious difference is size. Both are almost identical in true size but Neptune is farther.
Lunar Eclipse 9/28/2015
First it was cloudy and then it was cloudier. My plan to image it from start to finish went bust. But I still had a good time. The first pictures were taken at 1/100 second, with the ISO set to automatic while the last one was a full one second. Truth be told the clouds give the events some character but we had too much of a good thing.
