Gassendi + others, April 26

[bird]

The seeing was ok for a while last night, so I turned back to an old friend - the moon - for some more tests of the flea3 camera.

Here's the first test image, this is Gassendi, recorded through an astronomik ir742nm filter (passes 742nm and longer), recorded for 4 minutes @ 50fps. This is the real size image, it hasn't been rescaled.

Processed in Registax, astra Image and the Gimp.

The test here was to see if the longer wavelength filter helped improve the seeing, at the expense of some resolution but I think the seeing improvement was more significant.

Registax multipoint alignment was very important here, you can see where all the alignment points were located, as the detail ismuch improved at each point. There were 19 alignment points.

cheers, Bird

[Quark]

Nice job Bird,

What was the focal ratio for this?

You mentioned that the seeing was ok but what would you have rated it out of 10?

The Flea3 sure does seem to be the way to go.

I have noted that here on another thread you mentioned that this camera run gets quite warm. Out here I often have conditions that allow me to image over very long sessions of 4 to 5 hours and I was wondering if you had any thoughts on the thermal properties of the Flea.

That is, whether over time this heat would plateau or whether it would likely build up over time. I ask this as during this last summer I had very long sessions with Mars where the ambient temp never dropped below 20 degrees C.

Regards
Trevor

[Satchmo]

Very nice Anthony. I like the crater on the right hand side inside Cassendi that seems to have hit at the floor edge and sprayed material right up the side of the crater wall.

[bird]

Trevor, the effective focal length was around 11.5m, so I guess that makes it f/31 or so. The camera does run warm but I have seen no effect on the image from that, and outside at night it gets plenty of airflow. It's normally only warm to the touch.

I'd guess that it reaches its maximum temp after only about 10 minutes, so I wouldn't worry too much about long sessions.

cheers, Bird

[bird]

ps not sure how to rate the seeing, maybe 7.5 or so?

cheers, Bird

[bird]

Next image, a little crater called Vitello that caught my eye...

cheers, Bird

[iceman]

Continuing to look very promising. nice work Anthony!

[rally]

Anthony,

Nice work - the Flea3 sure does seem to be capable of some good results (in capable hands).

Could you post a single unprocesed image of say Gassendi please.

Cheers

Rally

BTW
I thought there we 11 kinds of people in the world, those who understand binary, and those who don't and those who arent sure what they are - well that can be the case if you are a Null entry with Microsoft !

[michaellxv]

Looks like you have a winner there.

[Troy]

Nice pictures Anthony :D

[bird]

Okey dokey, here's a random frame from that lot...

cheers, Bird

[rally]

Thanks Bird.

[bird]

One more image from this session... Copernicus. It didn't quite fit on the ccd but I got as much as I could :-)

cheers, Bird