[Dennis]

Hello,

We had a reasonably good night here in Brisbane. The few early clouds soon dispersed and we saw the Moon gradually get closer and closer to Antares. With the naked eye, I found that hiding the Moon behind the gutter on the roof made Antares really stand out, as the lunar glare was masked by the roof obstruction.

I hadn’t intended to take any photos, but when I looked through the Mewlon 180 with a WO 20mm, Antares appeared like a flame red point of light, just sitting off the edge of the Lunar limb approx 10 arc mins above Plato.

I rushed upstairs and grabbed the Pentax *ist DS and attached it to the ‘scope and focused through the eyepiece. I zoomed in on the image using the camera LCD panel and noticed the image was degraded due to the vibrations induced by the mirror flipping up. I had to set the ISO speed to 800ASA and the shutter speed to 1/350 sec before the image sharpened sufficiently – you really do need a mirror lock up on DSLR’s, as the token 2.5 second shutter delay was insufficient time to allow the mirror vibrations to stop.

Anyhow, here is the result – not pretty by any standards and most certainly not as pleasing and inspiring as viewing the live event.

Cheers

Dennis