After failing dismally to find Uranus yesterday morning for 30min in clear skies and thus missing the chance to photograph all planets, the Moon and Sun in a 24hr period,I decided to reshoot the Sun, Moon, Venus and Saturn last night and hope to use yesterday morning's Mercury, Mars, Neptune and Jupiter with a successful capture of Uranus this morning. The goal of all major Solar System bodies would be met.
I had a 5:15am start at work and a look outside showed cloud. I resigned myself to the fact it wasn't to be, but in the 5 minutes before leaving for work I looked out again and saw very thin cloud where Uranus should be. Pulling out the Dobsonian I didn't bother with any alignment and goto (which I relied on yesterday but only let me down) and pointed it up where the planet should be. Lo and behold it was right in the finder, so I attached the EOS 600D and 5x Powermate and took a video, manually tracked.
I am pleased to display my collection of Solar System major bodies from the 24/25th July AEST
Planets to apparent scale, and again to apparent scale with the Moon and Sun.
The second photo is the setup I used and taken at the time I imaged Jupiter about 6:15am yesterday. Don't be fooled by the complicated looking cables, I was using an extention cord to act as a variable counterweight for the camera. It really is a simple setup
Thanks for looking,
Tom