Rigel double - this one is for Ving

[davidpretorius]

Hi Guys,

seeing was not very good so my ventures with the guided dob did not amount to a satisfactory saturn or mars. I got a run of 1400 odd mars images, but they were not better than my non tracked ones, so they were deleted.

What i was very happy with was the start of my contributions for Vings multiple star collection

Rigel is a very nice double: Big Brother / Little Brother. I like to check this out as an indication of seeing and collimation.

This was taken at 208X (toucam at prime focus).There is 120 seconds (600 frames) of video and i only grabbed the first 40. So i may be able to improve on it.

I intend to capture the December challenge double and add that to the collection. The raw mode of the toucam seems to capture the stars a lot sharper for mine

Also with the guiding and raw mode, I will try for neptune and uranus tonight.

Anyway, it is with pleasure I present this to vingo

[janoskiss]

"Invalid Attachment specified. If you followed a valid link, please notify the webmaster"

I'm too lazy to be chatting with webmasters. Someone else wanna do it? :P

[Starkler]

Nice catch Dave :)

Its good to see people tackle new things instead of the usual m42, eta carina fare.

[ving]

well caught davo :)
I like rigel with its super bright white and diminuitive little blue. I find it rather pretty :)

many thanks :)

hey, you have tracking now dont you? gunna give some DSOs a go with your modded toucam?

[janoskiss]

The attachment is working now. :shrug: Nice pic!

[davidpretorius]

my pleasure,

yup, i have tracking, self guided with a hand controller. I tried the long exposure mod of the toucam last night and i need to tidy up the tracking. The system is doing very well considering it does not know the radius of any bearing, and hence it is tracking based upon my adjustments and thats it.

very impressive. once i have done the whole config stuff, i should see any further improvements to get a really steady images.

it was funny, i got mars with my 5mm eyepiece to stay there for about 1 minute and then it started to drift off the centre. i then swung over to orion and after say 5 minutes of adjusting, it seem to sort it self out and the trap stayed still for 2mins. I went for mars again and imaged that and then back to orioin with the 40mm (50x) and i thought that if the trap stayed still at 250x then at 50x I should be able to get 1 minute still exposure.

not to be the case. I think the controller remembers all your adjustments and thus will get confused if i am jumping back and forth without calibrating and stuff like that.

[asimov]

Well I'll be damned! I never expected your first tracked image to be....RIGEL! Pity about the seeing conditions for mars.

That's a nice capture mate, very impressive!

[ving]

i'd be confused if you started swinging me around everywhere to dave :P