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Monday, June 9, 2008

Rough night...

Well, sometimes things just do not go well. Was late getting set up, didn't start taking pictures until after 11pm. Then about an hour in, I noticed the camera moved...by itself.

Apparently, the T-ring is broken. Camera spins wonderfully around on it, too. Not sure how this happened, I'm not that hard on it. Tried to complete, but I was worried about how much rotation I had to process out. Since the T-ring mount was no longer fixed, it was flexing in the wrong direction as well. Had to wait until all the photo processing was finished only to discover that with all the moving and shifting as the telescope slew, focus was not consistent through all the frames. A new $20 part is on order.

I also tried out a 2x Tele Vue BIG barlow, and through all the other frustration I found that even though the increased view is nice for smaller objects, the visual acuity seems to suffer. Stars are softer, not sharp, and though focused (I think) the digital image seems a little unnatural. It looks magnified. Seems a better approach would be to use a Newt with a longer focal length.

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