My equipment and photo of moon last night

[joebee (Joe)]

First photo is of an adjustable platform that the dob frame sits on and with the dob, the rest is my case with lenses and gear and notebook running Stellarium, and lastly 2 photos of moon last night with just holding up a Nikon Coolpix S60 camera to the eyepiece.

[renormalised (Carl)]

The platform is a good idea

[mikerr (Michael)]

Nice set up Joe. What time did you take the moon pictures? Was there still some daylight about? Pretty good for coolpix through the eyepiece!!

Michael.

[mozzie (Peter)]

nice setup joe....even using the old bbq as a bench i see!!!!!!!!

[joebee (Joe)]

Yes Mike there still was light around that time, now I have invested in a webcam with adaptor to fit into the focuser and the cam will be connected to my notebook and hopefully I can take better pictures/movie of objects. The only thing is the movie clip will be short as object goes out of the tubes range. Have not got a goto on the dob, that is another project for the future. Will see how the cam works out and I will post the results. Just have to wait till it gets deliverd as I just bought in on ebay. My rotary digital angle gauge with encoder just arrived today and now i have to mount it on the dob mounting.

[vanwonky (Dave)]

Hi Joe,
I had my first crack with my webcam a few weeks ago on my non goto 12"dob. It can be a bugger to get the object lined up to start off one side but it didn't turn out to bad. Clever people will use the resulting AVI and get it into Registax to make a nice still.

http://www.youtube.com/user/davegoesastro/feed

Cheers
Dave

[joebee (Joe)]

Here is the digital radial gauge with readout mounted on the Dob frame

[joebee (Joe)]

Just another gizmo for the Dob i have made up today, it's a shelf that clips onto the working side of the Dob frame and will hold the Netbook that the webcam that is coming will be plugged into and the steel flat above the shelf will hold the magnetic readout for the digital radial gauge.

[PetarB (Petar)]

Just out of interest, what's the platform for in the first post? Getting it level?

[joebee (Joe)]

Yes that's right, I set up the platform to get the scope level and then use a digital angle meter on the scope itself (the meter is magnetised) to get elevation and also have a digital rotary meter with readout for the azimuth. Now I have a webcam (with an IR/UV filter) that has been modded to take short film clips with connected to a netbook, then use the Registax program to pick out the best frames and create a good photo. As of yet I have not used it but will shortly and up some photos