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Small scope views; Planets and Moon over Easter
I find the early morning setups of SCTs for planetary imaging a bit painful and we often have heavy damp or cloud. So this time I went for the easier setup of my 5 inch scope. It is a CFF140mm refractor and on Sunday morning I took it out for Saturn, Mars, Venus and Jupiter with the edge of the moon (taken Sat night) for good measure.
At f.75 without a flattener or corrector this scope was not designed as an imaging scope per se but like most refractors gives quite good contrasty images of planets. With the planets so far from opposition the 2.5x powermate fitted into an ADC thins out the limited light when providing the much needed magnification for Mars at 5.6" or when showing the moons close to Saturn or storms on Jupiter but I think the images obtained still look pretty decent.
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