Mars & Luna Video (Dec. 8, 2022, around 3 a.m. UT)

I posted a video of what the conjunction looked like through my wonderful 6" f/8 Newtonian, just before closest approach.  This little video link stays very small, though.  To reach the actual posted video, click here: https://youtu.be/EoYgxrQj_YI.  That will take you to the actual video posted on Youtube, which is much more like what I saw in the eyepiece.

Mars & Luna (Dec. 8, 2022, around 3 a.m. UT)

 

These are best 50% of a couple of 300-frame SER videos made with the QHY 5iii485c camera through my wonderful 6" f/8 Newtonian with Spooner-finished mirror.  The light from Mars took 4.57 minutes to go from Mars to Earth and the light from the Moon took 1.32 seconds. Moon, 395300 km; Mars, 82.2 million km.  So by the time I took this picture, Mars had moved.

Below is a single frame, perhaps the best of the night.

Rupes Recta (the Straight Wall) to Mare Nectaris (Sea of Nectar) (May 10, 2022)

 

The moon is a busy place!  The Straight Wall is a prominent feature (upper left), but one could easily get lost exploring from there to the Sea of Nectar.

This is a stack of about 200 frames gathered through my wonderful 6" f/8 telescope with a Vernonscope 1.5x barlow, so effectively at f/12, with the QHY 5iii485c camera.

Jupiter: Double Shadow Transit (Nov. 23, 2021 or UT Nov. 24, 2021)

 

Sometimes the sun and one of Jupiter's moons line up so that the moon's shadow crosses Jupiter's face. The shadow looks like a black spot on the planet. Tonight two shadows crossed Jupiter together---a photo op! The right shadow is Ganymede's; the left is Callisto's. In between them is the Great Red Spot. To the right and below the planet, you can spot the moons themselves, Ganymede nearer Jupiter and Callisto further away.

 

This image was shot through my wonderful 6-inch f/8 Newtonian telescope with a QHY5iii485c. 5,268 subframes were taken and 60% of them stacked and sharpened to make this image. The scope is Dobson-mounted, so I dragged the scope twice to make Jupiter transit across the camera chip three times.  I'd have used the CFF290 on the NJP, but I can only see Jupiter from the north end of the yard, where I can't see the north star to set up my mount (OK, yeah, without drift-aligning, but we all have our limits).

In Praise of the Newtonian - First Light with the 6" f/8

Last night for the first time I took the newly finished 6" f/8 out for a spin in the backyard.

This began as a project scope.  Here is a picture of what I started with: a Meade 6" f/8 set of optics, tube, spider, and primary mirror holder.  The tube was pretty beat up and full of holes.  I took these pictures when I was testing an added focuser.

My idea was to fix up the tube and use this for a visual scope.  After I took these pictures, I dissassembled the scope and put the optics and other parts in a box for safekeeping.

Then I began work on the tube.  I first of all sanded it down and filled all the holes with wood putty.  Then I added two coats of shellac.  This took a long time to dry, and it smelled terrible, but shellac sealed the tube and hardened it.  Of course, it also made the tube shiny.  Shellac is pretty high gloss.

That's ok.  On the inside, I installed flocking from Scopestuff.  Here is the inside of the scope half-flocked.  The improvement is pretty obvious compared with the shellac, but the flocking is much better even than the flat black paint that was there before.

After flocking the tube, I sealed the ends and remaining holes and spray-painted several coats of oil-based blue metallic paint, followed by a high gloss sealer.  The tube shines blue now.  I also built some tube rings of pine, painted flat black, and installed them around grey foam rubber.

The tube looks great, now.

And after all that, how are the views?  Superb!  Best views of Saturn I have ever seen.  Admitted, I am not a planet guy, but at 240x everything snapped to.  In moments of clear seeing, I could see the sharp black line of the ring's shadow on the planet's face, the dark cloud band opposite the rings (and the texture and shape of the cloud band), three moons clearly (Titan, Dione, and Rhea), and maybe four (I was not sure what that was, though I did see something where Tethys was, just coming around the pole of the planet).  I missed Enceladus, but our own moon was just a few degrees away, washing out the sky.  The whole thing looked just like the photos, only snappier, three-dimensional, and more real.   Bravo!  I look forward to many nights with this scope, viewing for myself and showing the view to others at public star parties.