[iceman (Mike)]

Last night I went out to image Neptune and Uranus.. what a lesson in frustration that was.

I had little trouble finding the planets for an eyepiece view, thanks to Starry Night, eyeball and finderscope, but trying to get the image on the CCD was frustrating beyond belief.

I was out the front of my house, with a street light and the laptop ruining any possible dark adaptation, so I could barely even see it through the finderscope, and I couldn't see the black crosshairs. When I turned my red led's on to illuminate the finder, being so dim, the faint smudge of star-like planet became invisible.

I ended up giving up on Neptune before capturing anything on the CCD. I turned my attention to Uranus, which was brighter in the finder, and I took out the 5x powermate and went back to a 2x barlow. I also changed the frame rate back to 7.5fps with a 1/8s exposure time to give a brighter image.

I finally got Uranus on the CCD, and figured out that my problem with Neptune was not enough light coming in, and not a long enough exposure.. They're so faint, that at the focal length, frame rate and exposure I was using, it wouldn't have been visible even if it was in the centre of the CCD - and this was at 100% gain.

I captured a few avi's of Uranus, with 100% gain and 1/15s exposure, but it was a very frustrating experience. I got nothing of neptune to show.. I don't know if I'll bother trying again from home, it's just too hard with a dob without goto to get it accurately in the FOV for the CCD - not to mention that I need a long exposure (like, 1/2 s) to let enough light in, and my platform isn't accurate enough for 1/2 s exposures.

So, I think i'll give up on the outer planets for now. I'll image them again in the future when I've got my OTA mounted on an EQ6 or something.