20090508 Sun

I have fine tuned the helical focuser of the Ranger and it now works perfectly, feel like cutting through butter. The platform plate works very well now and the stability is great, it reached out far enough for the summer days to come, good!

So the seeing improved a lot today, I would rate it a solid 5/10 today, and the transparency dropped a little bit, still good at 4/10. We don't have this kind of sky usually, and the weather feels like Fall, dry air and with soft to strong breeze, very comfortable.

My Tele Vue Ranger was used with a Solarmax 40 with BF10, DMK 31AF03 was used for capturing, everything all a LXD55. That platform plate is a long 6061 0.5cm plate which has a Intes dovetail mounted below, with a Manfrotto 410 geared head mount above to connect to the Ranger, a small counter weight has to be attached for balance in RA, it's totally out of balance in DEC but there's no problem for the LXD55.

1515 (GMT+8):-


I pulled out my eyepiece to have a look and I saw a nice prominence, so I put in my DMK there again to capture.

1521 (GMT+8):-


1524 (GMT+8), with 2x barlows:-


Unluckily, I couldn't use my C5/PST in this season...