20110413 Sun

This is the first time that I setup my 2nd C5 for imaging on the iOptron Cube, I don't know whether the problem was from high frequency seeing or it was the vibration from the mount, but then at 1250mm, I guess the chance for tracking vibration was not very likely.

20110410 Sun

I managed to get back home early enough to catch some sunshine! No more aperture blocking since I've moved my Ranger to the hacked side of the iOptron Cube. The hacked side is not as stable as the official side but then it works far better in the summer.

1526 (GMT+8), with reducer:-


1529 (GMT+8), with 2x barlows:-


1530 (GMT+8), with 2x barlows:-


1531 (GMT+8), with 2x barlows:-


Poor seeing at 2/10, transparency like 4/10. The sun is more active these days and it's always changing and a fun to capture.

20110409 Sun

Summer is coming, and the sun will be travelling westward so that I won't be able to shoot the sun from inside my home without some adjustments. Today, I've to open the other side of the window to shoot and the angle of view is very strange making centering of the solar disc a bit more difficult. Right now the solar disc was being blocked partially by the upper side of the window and so I'll have to wait around 30 minutes I guess (it's now 1256 GMT+8).

There's a large QRF as I can see with the partially blocked image from the display right now. A medium sized prominence loop could be detected as well.

Since I've to go out, I really have no time to wait for complete clearing of the blocked aperture, so here we go:



Taken at 1322 (GMT+8).

20110402 Indoor Stargazing

Pulled out my C5, the first task is to tune the collimation. I didn't do that for quite long and so it took me for more than 10 minutes... after that, it's good enough for casual observation, but for planet imaging, it would take a little bit longer to refine further.

The iOptron paddle is very user friendly, this is the very first time I use it on stuff other than the sun! Despite it has no numeric keypad, navigation is very fine and easy. On choosing deep sky objects, let say Messier objects, it will skip all those numbers which were not visible automatically and that speeds up the process a lot. You don't have to go through 0-9 one by one. Choosing a named star is similar. Choosing Sirius involves only a few key presses, I love this mount even more now! Tracking is very stable at 96x, no noticable vibration at all. GOTO is pretty accurate especially when you have a bright star around for "sync".

M42 is a very fine sight despite the heavy light pollution and the poor transparency, the fuzzy patch is very small and dim, but then the trapezium splits very nicely with a 20mm Japanese Widescan. M41 is good with a 13mm Nagler, it is not as great when obsering with a 20mm Japanese Widescan due to the serious light pollution and hazy sky. The sky was darkened with the higher magnification and it certainly helps.


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Here's some Chinese notes:

好耐無試過室內睇星, 有薄薄一層雲, GOTO 去 M41, 咩都見唔倒, GOTO 去 Sirius 再 sync 返台 mount, 再 GOTO 返 M41, 低倍目鏡見倒幾粒星, 換高倍少少, 再深呼吸少少, 即刻成地都係星星!! 果種見倒與見唔倒之間既感覺正係肉眼觀星既樂趣~