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Old August 19th 03, 02:29 PM
Paul Gitto
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Default Meade Pictor 416XT and Mars

Here's a small check list.

If you are having a blooming problem, stop down your telescope,
build a cardboard cover and place a 3" or 4" diameter hole off center.
That should cut back the amount of light to the camera.
Also for other problems....
Is you telescope properly collimated?
Has your telescope cooled sufficiently?
How is the seeing?
Is there any wind? 12"LX200's are quite shaky.
You will need to stack and combine multiple images to get results you see
from others.
The Pictor has a design flaw for Planetary imaging. The Shutter.
CCD cameras without shutters work better, as they cause no shaking.

For more info
Check out
http://perso.club-internet.fr/legault/index.html

Paul Gitto
The Arcturus Observatory (H92)
http://cometman.com


"Johan van der Walt" wrote in message
...
I hope I post this to the correct group.

I have access to a 12" Meade LX200 telescope that is located at a very
good site. Also available is a Meade Pictor 416XT CCD camera which I have
used on several occasions. About two weeks ago I tried to image Mars
which turned out to be way too bright since severe blooming occured
even at the shortest shutter speed of 5 milliseconds. Last Friday
evening I tried again but this time I also used Optec's filters
in conjunction with the CCD camera that made a huge difference in
terms of the fact that no blooming occured, except when really
overexposing the CCD.

What was rather disappointing is that at the best focus I just
couldn't see any surface features of Mars while I expected to see
something. The planet just remained a white blob on the screen.
Can I expect to see any surface features or not? This is the case
in all the filters that I used viz Johnson BVR.

I shall appreciate any advice.

Thanks

Johan van der Walt
Potchefstroom
South Africa