So... I actually started the evening by replacing the collimation screws on the SCT. One of the stock screws had stripped and the other two were well on their way. So I bought some stainless hex screws and luckily I purchased the correct size. I started by taking the bad screw out. I figured out that I needed to tighten the other screws as I was removing the bad screw. When I got it all back together, I was obscenely out of collimation. Embarrassingly, it took an hour to get the collimation back to spec.
In terms of imaging, I started the evening with the QHY 462C camera and methane images of Jupiter and Saturn. Tried the UV barlow from Harry Siebert. Disappointed to see 4-5 small scratches on the lens AND ghost reflections, but it's okay. Tried the Baader methane filter on Mars -- not much to see. Then switched to the UV/IR blocking filter through the TV 2x and ZWO ADC. Seeing seems consistently decent through the night -- but still I'm only seeing okay details on the planet. There are these fleeting moments occasionally of good surface detail but mostly, it's just okay. Doing 11 and 13 sets of 2 min images to be stacked and sharpened, then dropped in WinJupos.
I have the UV filter and UV barlow but I don't know if it will work through the SCT. Might be a dumb idea. We'll see...
[Update: Finished the morning by shooting Venus with the QHY290M with the Baader UV filter and Siebert UV barlow. Probably too much magnification but there were definitely some bright and dark areas which must correspond to the varying densities of upper atmosphere clouds. I shot 4 min subs and tried to keep the histogram to the right. Don't feel great after staying up all night.]
No comments:
Post a Comment