You may have missed it, but I have discovered the beauty of collimation by realising my problems were mainly due to the misalignment of the focuser tube. Once I packed it out on one screw a little but, it made a world of difference.
I just processed another one of my many captures from last night and after playing with some curves and some RGB levels in registax seemed to have nailed what I think is probably one of the best images my scope can produce.
I know its not gunna win many over, but geez I am happy. I actually processed the LR deconvolution and when it finished yelled, "holy crap!......holy crap! DETAILS!"
Can anyone tell I am happy?
Thanks for stopping by, I appreciate your reading time.
Cheers
Chris
Last edited by Screwdriverone; 08-08-2008 at 10:57 PM.
Yes, well, I may have told you more than once. Looking at it again, the resized jpg is a bit blurry, the second bmp version is more natural and a better indication of what size it would really be from my scope.
I removed the first one, it pretty much was the same data as the second one but for some silly reason I resized it 3x in Gimp but it just looked silly here so I binned it.
I used the 3x ED barlow here and as I said, once I packed out the focuser to line it up properly, jeez, what a difference!
Cheers
Chris
p.s added new image from previous captured avi same night and some moon data is showing!!!!! wooohhooooooo!
Last edited by Screwdriverone; 06-08-2008 at 08:46 PM.
Reason: same session added different avi
:thumbsup : well done chris
how did u manage to get a pic like that with your scope awsome so there is hope for me yet yayyyyyyyyyy ok what sort of cam did u use or was it from the toucam
good on ya Chris cheers
can i put on a 3x barlow on my scope too (cool i want one)
Thanks for the praise, its all about practice and getting the collimation right. Yes, the 3x ED barlow ($49 from Andrews comms) would work with your scope and all you really need is a toucam webcam (spc900nc) to get shots like this, however you will need to process these in registax too and post process later on.
Its a bit complicated, but worth it in the end.
Thanks Alex, I am getting there, more cash required to get bigger and better, but happy with what the piddly reflector can do now.
I just played with the same file I originally processed and posted it here for comparison.
For some reason I cant figure out, the original BMP now looks really bad? it seems to have lost the edges of the planet, and buggered if I know why it looks crap now but I was happy with it before????
I am sure it looked better before, and now I am confused. I reprocessed this stack again and either I was blind before, or I am getting better at processing and the original one I posted was yucky to begin with?
Dunno, anyhow, have a look, I think this one is much better than the first post.
Thanks for the praise, its all about practice and getting the collimation right. Yes, the 3x ED barlow ($49 from Andrews comms) would work with your scope and all you really need is a toucam webcam (spc900nc) to get shots like this, however you will need to process these in registax too and post process later on.
Its a bit complicated, but worth it in the end.
Cheers
Chris
Hey thanks Chris your welcome i just hope santa is good to me this year haha i would love some more toys and skills to take nice pics later on down the track but first i better learn how to use the scope properly first hahaha
Yeah you are probably right, have you had a chance to try the alignment and spin, or are you still "Jenhandling" the scope by picking it up and turning the whole thing around?
chris, it seems in the second image that the focus may have been of just by the smigiest of smigens... although the second pic definitely has more detail..
When I look at all of them (by clicking on the last one I posted then pressing the traffic light looking button on the top right) it shows all of the images posted here one by one on the left and then when I compare them, the last one posted on #9 is MILES better than the first two.
Its funny, I thought the earlier ones were good, but now they just look crap?
Yeah you are probably right, have you had a chance to try the alignment and spin, or are you still "Jenhandling" the scope by picking it up and turning the whole thing around?
Chris
Im still "jenhandling"
I think i will wait till summer when it is warmer outside instead of me freezing my butt off for an hour of trying to align something up it is much quicker to pick it up
FYI, I figured it out, monitor and video adaptor settings had gone screwy. Realised what it was when I looked at AlexN's Jupiter and it looked bad, knew then I had a problem with my PC coz his Joops never look bad like mine
:thumbsup : well done chris 
might not be your pc 
