The Moon - 18/04/2005

[Chrissyo (Chris)]

My first moon shot with my camera bracket. Had to play with brightness as it was too bright. The image is a little blurry, which I think is because the camera is not 100% flush with the eyepiece. Will work that out. Also found the Manual Focus, so no more random defocusing from the camera. I showed a mate from school this picture today. He doesn't believe I took it. Must be a good sign.

[Robby]

Very nice indeed... Keep it up!

[westsky]

Hi chrissyo, very nice, I see a big improvment over your previous shots,
good work keep it up.
The focus looks good and I think the blurry bit is because of "camera shake" maybe you didn't have the scope perfectly still?
I know that will be hard with your setup, plus the extra weight of the camera up top won't help, try resting the scope on something solid before you take your shots,
Maybe you can rig up a adjustable stand to rest on, shouldn't be too hard you did a good job on the camera mount :-))
cheers
david.

[gbeal]

Nice shot Chrissyo,
Clavius is the big one lower left.
Maybe do what I used to do, use the built in self timer, and that may help with the shakes. Keep at it.
Gary

[67champ]

Really nice pic! Do you remember what power that was at and did you use any of the camera zoom also?

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

fantastic improvement Chris. That looks great. Wait for your mates comments when you get your first Jupiter or Saturn shots. They'll be blown away.

If you want to balance out your scope a bit plus add a bit more weight (increase inertia to reduce movement from the shutter snapping) you could try ballaratdragons modification of adding magnets to the bottom of your OTA on the sides. Because they are not permanently fixed you can slide them up and down and round the circumference of the OTA to get a nice balance. Then you can remove them when you don't need them for visual work.

[janoskiss (Steve H)]

Very nice shot, and the reaction you got from your mate is just what you want. Just don't go too far or else you'll be up for burning at the stake like Galileo was. Knowing that you're right with no one to believe you must be one of the worst things... but i digress just a little ...

Great moon shot Chrissyo! I am yet to get a single shot thru my DOB and several cameras. I tried but I can't get proper focus with the film SLRs and can't see nothing with the digital crapmera.

[Chrissyo (Chris)]

I'm not fully sure what you mean by shake... probably because I didn't explain what I was using very well.

The camera itself wasn't shaking as it was held in place with my bracket. It is a video camera, and I actually filmed the shown area as it travelled across my field of view, then stacked it in Registax. I wasn't in contact with the scope at all during the time it was filming.

Westsky- would your idea about resting the scope against something be good for stopping wind shake? Although I havn't noticed a lot of wind at my place since I've started astronomy, there could be the odd breeze I havn't picked up. Would something keeping the OTA stable be a good idea? Or would it just be too hard to move the OTA to realign?

67Champ - I used my 32mm eyepiece (with the camera held to the eyepiece) with my f5 Dob. That makes it about 39X or so power I believe. Also, I did use the camera zoom (the digital zoom) to after 10X, but probably just before 20X (maybe 16 or 17?). I have been able to use the camera's digital zoom now ALOT more than I was a few nights ago, as I found the manual focus button. That way, the only focusing I need to do is with the telescope focuser, and the image doesn't randomly blur in and out. Here is an example of size comparison with the zoom I am now able to use. My display picture is the size I could use a few days ago. With manual zoom, I can now get Saturn to be larger (See attched image). The larger image is only a test (and is therefore extremly crappy), and I am sure I could get it looking much better with another night of Saturn.

EDIT: Forgot to mention (this relates to 1ponders post), my actual telescope doesn't have any balance problems. I thought it would with the added wait of camera bracket + camera, but it still balances beautifully. The only time when it doesn't balance is when I am pointing the scope at something quite low on the horizon, and seeing as I pretty much only really have overhead + a bit of sky visible due to my family living in a small forest of type, it doesn't bother too much.

[johnno]

Another nice bit of photography,well done.
Regards.John

[westsky]

Hi Chrissyo, when you think about what you have done , mounting the camera on the scope then the whole scope/camera setup becomes one, so even though the camera is held still if the scope moves then you will see that movement in the camera,hench the term camera shake.
You say the scope stays put with the camera attached,it will only take 1mm of movement to affect the final image.
Try the shot again and try to support the top of the tube, use a chair or kitchen stool to begin with or anything that gets you to the right height.
If you have any sort of breeze or wind this will move the scope in small amounts so it will help with wind also.
another thing to consider you are shooting at high F ratio's maybe F20 or F30 or higher, to do astro at these ratio's the scope/camera must not make sudden movements such as a small breeze would give you.
The good thing about the way you are imaging is you can pick the best frames with registax and only stack them this will give you a better final result.
Keep at it Chrissyo, you have a good result with this shot and don't be afraid to try anything and everything to get a great shot.

cheers
david.

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

Good feed back Chrissyo. Keep up the good work