[Quark (Trevor)]

Hi All,

Captured 33 avi's between midnight and 3:30 am CST.
This was the first time I have used my new 5x Powermate and the image scale is incredible. With my filter wheel in place the distance between the top of the powermate and the surface of the CCD chip in my DMK results in the powermate working at 7x.

The relative image scale produced by my 16" F4.5 Newt is generally very good and in this instance, enormous. Jupiter will not fit on the CCD chip with both of the poles slightly clipped.

This was trial and error to work out what settings worked best with this setup. My raw data looked promising, although the seeing would have to be very good to do justice to this much magnification.

These images were captured with the seeing being fair about 5 to 6 / 10 and are pretty ordinary but I can see the potential of this setup.

I cannot wait to have a crack at Saturn next year and Mars later this year.

There are some spots in these images that, initially, I thought was dust on my CCD. Before packing up this morning I gently rotated the DMK and as the image rotated the spots stayed in the same places on my screen. The spots are on all of my avi's and in the same positions regardless of which filter is in position, so there cannot be on the CCD or on the filters in the filter wheel. I am thinking they must be on the powermate, but it is brand new and looks clean as.

As this really was just a test of my setup and as the image fills the frame, I have not labeled them. However South is up and West is to the right.

Thanks for looking
Regards
Trevor