Mars 31st Oct.

Scope pictures.

The weather was really crap tonight, very cloudy and windy... so here's some pictures of my telescope in the garden.

A view from the other side...

http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/allabout/nightsky/nightsky02-2005.html

Mars 27th

More from the 26th

Later on...

Mars and scope collimation.

It's amazing what a small amount of collimating can do.
I adjusted the Scope after suspecting that the mirror was out of line. I used a bright star and de-focused, I could see that the concentric rings were skew whiff.
I tried to adjust one of the screws on the scope, it was too tight, so I tried another, which was looser. I turned it a small fraction and looked back in the eyepiece. It was better, I turned it a tiny bit more, and it now seemed OK. I went back to look at Mars and WOW!
I could see loads more detail. I could now use the barlow lenses without the fuzzy blobs as before. I'll need to spend a bit more time doing a proper job on the collimating, but for the time being it's made a difference of 100%
The image above was taken a few minutes before the one below.

Mars on 26th Oct My best yet!

...other Moon pics taken on 22nd Oct 2005

Moon on 22nd Oct 2005

Apollo 15 Landing site.
Toucam, Prime Focus, Celestron Advanced Series C9 1/4-S (XLT) - Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescope.
1000 frame avi, Registax, Paintshop pro...lot of dew about...on the Earth that is.

Mars 23rd again.

Mars on the 22nd

Mars on the 22nd

Very bad cloud cover, snatched a few AVI's in between the clouds. Used Toucam and 2x Barlow.

M13 The Great Globular Cluster in Hercules

M13 has in excess of 100,000 stars, spans 150 light years across, is over 20,000 light years distant, and is more than 12 billion years old.
Pentax 750z, with an exposure time of 6 sec, F/2.8, ISO400.
I used a tripod to hold camera up to the lens. Must buy one of those camera brackets!

The Moon through the new scope.

Here is the Moon taken from my bedroom window, it was too low in the sky to be seen from anywhere else. I used my Pentax 750z, with an exposure time of 1/16, F/5, ISO 80.

This is a composite of two images.

There was so much distortion caused by the local, that I was unable to get any usable video from the Toucam!

Mars image detail.

Mars on the 8th

Managed to get out tonight, weather has been really bad the last week this is the only time that I've seen stars since the 4th. Mars was very low again, a great deal of distortion in the avi's captured.
Again, all these images are taken without any barlow lens or filters... I haven't got them yet, they're on order. :-(

Mars two

This is another rendition with the best frames taken from the 500 frame avi.

Mars

This is my first picture of Mars. 4th Oct 2005.

Please bear in mind that I had the Toucam plugged into the scope with no filters or lenses.

Also the front of the scope was 90% dewed over, and Mars was low in the sky just above local rooftops ... excuses...excuses.

I used K3ccdTools and 500 frames in Registax.