So I've been getting my solar gear out to shoot some h-alpha images. But I wanted to really drill down on the SM60II scope to see if it was really garbage. (I've had a lot of disappointing sessions with it.) After a lot of finagling -- including taking it apart to examine the ITF and the etalon, I got it working "okay" -- still less contrasty than the PST.
But around 3:07 pm, I was looking at the sun through the 8mm brandon, noticing some nice plages around a sunspot when a PLANE went through the middle of the sun! You could clearly see the 727-esque looking private jet and the thermal currents as it passed right through.
I've wanted to take that shot but alas I wasn't imaging. Even if I put in a 1000 hours imaging, I bet I'll never get that shot again. It was neat to see.
Anyways, my plan is to get up the Quark h-alpha on a 80mm scope next to the SM60 to see if there's a significant differennce. The Quark setup will be 4.3x more magnified but it will still be a good test. The SM60 should get me some decent full disc shots of the sun.
In other imaging news, I think I'm done with my 30 nights on Jupiter. My preliminary impression is that the seeing was worse than last year's Mars project. I also shot myself in the foot by sticking with the 462MC color camera instead of RGB. I was sorta burned out but also scared of screwing up the RGB technique. I don't know, I should have pushed harder on this. But next year should be dramatically better.
