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1/31/04

First up was Saturn. As usual, seeing was not too good. I started with a 2.5x TeleVue Powermate in the C14 at the Donald C. Martin Observatory. I grabbed 2 minutes of video at 5 fps to yield 600 images. I made 3 other runs at prime focus. Each was 2 minutes long. Two were grabbed at 5 fps (600 frames), the last at 10 fps (1200 frames). Images were captured with K3CCD using a Phillips ToUcam at 640x480 resolution. An IR blocking filter was used. images were processed with Registax 2. The wavelet and brightness controlsbrought out detail. I tend to push the 5,6 wavelets more then the 1,2 waveltets. I try o keep the lower number wavlets in the low single digits to avoid noise. Some "tweaking" was done in GIMP (crop, rotate, curve adjustment). Some images were magnified by 20%.

I didn't like the magnified image so I backed off to prime focus. I was able to shot faster with the lower magnification at prime focus.

Tonight was special as I was accompanied by my son who served as telescope operator. I gave my daughter the same option, but she merely rolled her eyes at me. It is 14 degrees f.

2.5x powermate, 1/25 sec	prime focus, 1/50 sec	prime focus, 1/50 sec
prime focus, 1/50 sec	prime focus, 1/50 sec	prime focus, 1/50 sec, 20% magnification

I decided to halve the exposure time in order to try to beat the seeing.

prime focus, 1/100 sec

Then I pushed the fps to capture more frames. These images are only 208 of 1200 frames.

prime focus, 1/100 sec, 20% magnification

prime focus, 1/100 sec

In spite of the somewhat gibbous moon several DSO's were imaged. Images were acquired using an AstroVid Stellacam II using AstroVideo and an ImperX card. All were at 256 frame accumulation (8.533 second images). Most were shot at "no" gamma. Gain was at 50-60%. Dark frames were subtracted. Dimmer objects were processed with FitsX (from the makers of Astrovideo).

NGC 2371 was revisited at f6. I was disappointed with the image scale that resulted form the other night's attempt at f3.3. This represents 100x8.5 second images with dark subtraction.