19th April was the clearest night I think I ever experienced from my place. The stars were solid and Saturn and Mars looked awesome. Using the Baader Contrast booster and Neodimium filters really do work wonders.
My 8" SCT showed a sharp as a tack Mars and Saturn through the 5mm eyepiece, so I decided to experiment with various powers, 11mm type6 nagler with a 2.5X powermate, 3X Barlow and 5X powermate as well as the 5mm X-Cel & 2X celestron barlow. Magnifications of 461X and 554X looked awesome, clear and detailed... 816X and 923X was obviously pushing the mirror light gathering ability overboard. That said it wasn't that bad, sure, saturn was soft, but massive in the eyepiece.
The smaller pics are captured using a 3X Barlow and the bigger ones are taken through the 5X powermate. This is the first time I used the 5X TV for imaging since I purchased it, seeing was never good enough till last Saturday for it...
Those two with the 3 x Barlow of Mars and Saturn are stunning for an 8".
I come nowhere near those with a DBK21 and my 9.25" must be my cheap stubby Barlow lenses I think I may have to upgrade
Thank you for all the encouraging comments... I was very happy with the results from the night, that said, I think I'm still over cooking my pics to squeeze a little more detail out, so most of my images look cartooney.
Carl, I was lucky with the seeing that night, it was one of if not the clearest I ever seen here. Logically you'd think that a 9.25" mirror should capture more detail than a 8". The bigest factor here is seeing I think. For the record I use Televue Power mates 2.5X & 5X, Televue 3X barlow and a Celestron 2X barlow.
