Neptune & Triton. Mewlon 180 & ST7 prime focus.

[Dennis]

Hello,

Well, after the fright of a possum fight with one of the combatants having a swim in our pool, twice, I finally managed to settle down and grab some images of Neptune and Triton.

The gibbous Moon was only approx 3 degrees away but it seems the short, 30 sec exposures were not sufficient to be affected by the glow. I have also included a reference chart from SkyTools.

I had planned to use the night as a working session, investigating some side-by-side flexure issues, so any results showing round stars were a bonus!

Thanks for looking!

Dennis

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

Nice shootin' Dennis. Where did you get that seeing from????

[Dennis]

Originally Posted by [1ponders]

Nice shootin' Dennis. Where did you get that seeing from????

Hi Paul

Thanks! I was experimenting with various settings in PHDGuiding and I had the guide star exposure set for 2 seconds, so I much have been following the seeing!

Imaging system: Mewlon 180 F12 at PF of 2160mm with ST7 at 0.86 acrsec/pixel.
Guide system: WO 66mm Petzval with (original) Orion Deep Space Star Shooter.

IIRC, I had PHD apply only 75% of the correction and I increased the Hysteresis (it “learns” from previous corrections) from 10 to 20.

Cheers

Dennis

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

You'll have to show me some of this fancy pHD stuff at Duckadang Dennis.

[Liz]

Great image Dennis ... nice to see Triton
The possum show sounded very entertaining - wildlife can certainly keep us on our toes during the wee dark hours, while out with scopes

[matt]

Nice work, Dennis....and an amusing story re: the possums. Although I'm sure it wasn't too funny at the time

[Quark (Trevor)]

Very well done Dennis,
Don't think I have ever seen an image of Triton on this forum, at least not since I have been here.

Top Stuff
Regards
Trevor

[StephenM (Stephen)]

Very impressive Dennis! That's the first amateur Triton image I'ver seen. Great work!

Cheers,
Stephen

[Ric]

A top capture Dennis, very nicely done.

Cheers

[Dennis]

Thank you for your nice comments.

In Jul & Aug of 2006 Paul [1ponders] managed to record the movement of Triton over several nights using modest equipment, an ED80 with Canon 300D so it doesn’t require the focal length of the Mewlon and an expensive SBIG ccd camera!

Cheers

Dennis