Following the donation of a 10" Meade LX200 Classic to the Society which had a defective drive, we de-forked it and added a dovetail plate to allow it to be used on our imaging mounts. After our last SAS meeting, a brief period of clear skies allowed it to be tested by using a flip mirror and the Pegasus SmartEye unit to bring it to a focus on Jupiter and the Great Orion nebula and a few images were taken with the Pegasus SmartEye. Whilst in standalone mode the SmartEye can only take a minimum 5s exposure; this was too long for resolving any detail on Jupiter, however the 4 Galilean moons were nice and sharp, with Europa nearest to the planet, then Io, Callisto and Ganymede furthest out. The central area of M42 containing the Trapezium area was also well resolved, with the SmartEye revealing colour straight away. Just 1 minute 40 seconds of Jupiter and 4 minutes of M42 were taken using an Optolong L-Pro filter attached to the SmartEye. Data were stacked in DSS and processed in Pixinsight and Adobe Photoshop to produce the sample montage.
Click on the image to get a closer view
Chris Bowden
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