I targeted the moon to test out the new configuration of the ETX125 following repairs to the polar mount screws and new hand box configuration. Following a drive re-train I set up the scope on the lawn pad pilings, performed a 2 star polar alignment, attached the QHY5 mono camera via a USB tether for remote capture in the control room using IR focusing via a stepper motor, with scope positioning performed via AutoStar Suite using the Meade USB to serial converter connected to the PC and the serial port of the AudioStar hand box.
I took 500 frame SER’s of various regions of the Moon with AstroDMx Capture and stacked these in Autostakkert! 3 (using 50% of frames for the stack) and processed the output file in Gimp as png files.
I used MS ICE to stitch the individual northern moon areas I took together into a wide angle view which shows the striking contrast between the bright rays of Tycho crater and the dark lava filled Schickard on the terminator. All of the images I sent you as cropped jpegs were taken with 6 millisecond exposure and 10% gain.
Click on an image to get a closer view
Chris Bowden
No comments:
Post a Comment