It was never goint to be easy, forecast of -3 over night, IIS / STS coming out of the earths shadow at aprox 5:42am at say 65 degrees and then heading further east. It was already going to be small.
10pm:
Anyway, got the toucam in at prime focus ie f5 (208x), set exposure on canopus roughly the same magnitude, 1/500th and 10 fps. Align the guide scope and toucam, kept the peltiers going over night and go to bed.
5:30am, -4 degrees ambient, mirror -3.5 degrees, ice can be seen 80% of the way down the
inside of the tube, but mirror is clear of any ice or condensation.
Seeing still horrible at 1/10
Anyway, 1 minute later than starry night predicted, there it is and boy is it moving fast. Already had an avi of running, so start hand guiding whilst looking thru guide scope.
The end result 8 frames out of 1800 that have something.
By the time, something had registered, it wsa getting very low on the horizon.
Anyway, it was very exciting, I am very pleased with the cooling system and telescope in very cold conditions.
Here is the best frame, cropped, converted to greyscale and deconvoluted in Astra image.
Please contain giggling til you are off the forum out of respect for mike and the mods
