astro: 1-19-08 moon

10x.001 seconds
Meade 8" Schmidt-Newtonian
Celestron Advanced Series GT
Sbig ST2000XCM

resized but not cropped, fits nice on the chip with this setup.
--
John N. Gretchen III
N5JNG NCS304
http://www.tisd.net/~jng3

John N. Gretchen III wrote:

10x.001 seconds
Meade 8" Schmidt-Newtonian
Celestron Advanced Series GT
Sbig ST2000XCM

resized but not cropped, fits nice on the chip with this setup.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

I can just fit the moon's diameter along my long axis but not the short
one as my fov is about 33.4' by 22.3'

That's about all you can do up here right now with the brilliant skies
from the snow reflecting that bright moon.

I made up a hex mask for the scope and was going to try it on Sirius to
see if I could pull out the pup. I'd done so on the C-14 at Hyde at
this separation when it was going in. But it is nearly 7 degrees higher
in the sky down there than up here. But with the camera reporting back
it was at -42C I found the filter wheel wouldn't turn and was stuck
between two filters. Seeing was too lousy anyway.

For some reason the moon really does look to be made of green cheese on
my monitor. Has a slight green tint. Though this monitor sometimes
does that to my photos as well. I use a much better CRT for working on
my photos. This one is unreliable as to color balance even after going
through Photoshop's elaborate procedures. It's a 5 year old flat
screen. They weren't all that good back then.

Even .001 seconds over exposes the moon severely on my chip. I have to
use the H-alpha filter to dim it down. Then I must use full 1x1 binning
to even allow the H-alpha filter to dim it enough. In fact it doesn't.
I cheat and set the camera to .000 seconds. That gives me a max
reading of about 57,000. Still too bright to be in the linear part of
the chip but best I can do. Did you have to do some filtering to get
that to work at .001. I'd think at f/4 rather than my f/10 you'd have
even more of a problem than I do. Might be how the ABG reacts to a
bright image.

Rick
--
Correct domain name is arvig and it is net not com. Prefix is correct.
Third character is a zero rather than a capital "Oh".

This was without any filters except the ones on the chip...

Rick Johnson wrote:


I can just fit the moon's diameter along my long axis but not the short
one as my fov is about 33.4' by 22.3'

That's about all you can do up here right now with the brilliant skies
from the snow reflecting that bright moon.

I made up a hex mask for the scope and was going to try it on Sirius to
see if I could pull out the pup. I'd done so on the C-14 at Hyde at
this separation when it was going in. But it is nearly 7 degrees higher
in the sky down there than up here. But with the camera reporting back
it was at -42C I found the filter wheel wouldn't turn and was stuck
between two filters. Seeing was too lousy anyway.

For some reason the moon really does look to be made of green cheese on
my monitor. Has a slight green tint. Though this monitor sometimes
does that to my photos as well. I use a much better CRT for working on
my photos. This one is unreliable as to color balance even after going
through Photoshop's elaborate procedures. It's a 5 year old flat
screen. They weren't all that good back then.

Even .001 seconds over exposes the moon severely on my chip. I have to
use the H-alpha filter to dim it down. Then I must use full 1x1 binning
to even allow the H-alpha filter to dim it enough. In fact it doesn't.
I cheat and set the camera to .000 seconds. That gives me a max
reading of about 57,000. Still too bright to be in the linear part of
the chip but best I can do. Did you have to do some filtering to get
that to work at .001. I'd think at f/4 rather than my f/10 you'd have
even more of a problem than I do. Might be how the ABG reacts to a
bright image.

Rick

--
John N. Gretchen III
N5JNG NCS304
http://www.tisd.net/~jng3