[Robert_T]

Clouds parted this evening after afternoon rain. Seeing again a bit ordinary but could be worse, say 5/10, lots of detail coming in and out of focus but basic planet shape fairly stable.

Got a couple of AVi's off. The first I'm pretty happy with, reasonably sharp and all that. Taken with the 2.5x powermate. The second is with the 4x powermate, but the conditions just weren't quite good enough to support it hence the relatively grainy apearance.

One thing I did this time was drop brightness down below 50% and really cranked up the gain to 60-70% and Gamma 50-60%. NO Onion rings. The lessen I've taken out of this is it's not under-exposure (as the light meter is still reading the same ~180), rather the gain and or gamma's contribution to the exposure is more important than brightness.

cheers,