It was a fantastically clear night. We were due to go out for dinner with some friends, but I had enough time beforehand to set up the scope, get it tracking and to try out the effect of my mods.
The mods?
1. Clean mirror - just weak detergent solution and plenty of water, finished off wih deionised, NEVER touching the mirror surface.
2. Removal of the fan assembly at the base of the scope - lighter.
3. Getting the primary and secondary closer so that I can drop the Barlow (needed to focus the DSLR)- I now have an F5 instead of F10!
In all, these changes shaved off just under 600g (it wasn't really that dirty!)
Anyway, got the telescope aligned, calibrated, polar aligned...............to find I had a dead as a doornail laptop!
So, no guiding, but around 85 x 60 s exposure plus some darks got me this:
Messier 33
Now to get another laptop; this time it will stay indoors and I will get longer USB cables - I think the dew from a couple of sessions ago killed it!
The mods?
1. Clean mirror - just weak detergent solution and plenty of water, finished off wih deionised, NEVER touching the mirror surface.
2. Removal of the fan assembly at the base of the scope - lighter.
3. Getting the primary and secondary closer so that I can drop the Barlow (needed to focus the DSLR)- I now have an F5 instead of F10!
In all, these changes shaved off just under 600g (it wasn't really that dirty!)
Anyway, got the telescope aligned, calibrated, polar aligned...............to find I had a dead as a doornail laptop!
So, no guiding, but around 85 x 60 s exposure plus some darks got me this:
Messier 33
Now to get another laptop; this time it will stay indoors and I will get longer USB cables - I think the dew from a couple of sessions ago killed it!
No comments:
Post a Comment