Moon last night (11 Jan)

http://tinyurl.com/8o8bw

Taken with LPI through a Skywatcher 80mm refractor. A lovely crisp evening
last night which taught me the combined value of astronomy and patio
heaters.


Chris

Chris Taylor wrote:

http://tinyurl.com/8o8bw

Taken with LPI through a Skywatcher 80mm refractor. A lovely crisp evening
last night which taught me the combined value of astronomy and patio
heaters.

Nice.
Could you let us know what equipment you used to take this, and how you
did it?
mounts/adaptor/camera etc?
Thanks
Alan.


--
To reply by e-mail, change the ' + ' to 'plus'.

"A.Lee" wrote in message
...
Chris Taylor wrote:

http://tinyurl.com/8o8bw

Taken with LPI through a Skywatcher 80mm refractor. A lovely crisp
evening
last night which taught me the combined value of astronomy and patio
heaters.

Nice.
Could you let us know what equipment you used to take this, and how you
did it?
mounts/adaptor/camera etc?
Thanks
Alan.

Hi Alan

Thanks for looking.

Meade manufacture the LPI (lunar planetary imager) which is really easy to
use compared to the webcam (Toucam) route. It isn't however as senstitive as
the Toucam and best pictures I've seen from the Toucam are better than the
best that I've seen from the LPI. You can get either through a number of
suppliers. Try Telescope House: http://www.telescopehouse.co.uk
http://tinyurl.com/64oyf

I used the skywatcher 80mm refractor because its field of view fits the
entire moon (and consequently the similarly sized sun (WITH Baader Solar
filter)). The skywatcher can be bought from
http://www.warehouseexpress.co.uk/ for about £150 but I'd advise against
going with this as a dedicated scope for Solar System photography as you'll
be limited to the sun and moon or tiny planetary images.

The scope is attached to a Celestron C5 GOTO mount. Its OK for the limited
imaging use of the scope but isn't too good for longer (deep sky) exposures.
The great thing about this combination is that it takes about 5 minutes to
set it all up, including the laptop to LPI operation.

The LPI has a standard 1.25" fitting and will slot straight into most
telescope's eyepiece holder's. There's no other adaptation required. With
the LPI software (Meade Autostar software) you set the exposure time,
quality discriminator and press start, the program filters the good images
from the bad and automatically stacks them to improve the image. There are a
few other settings to play with depending on the file type you'd like to see
output (JPG, BMP etc). There are additional advanced settings for drizzle,
filters etc but these can be learnt as you progress.

Hope this is what you were looking for.

Regards


Chris

plz explain more
cuz im confused!