ASI 178MM (cooled), Baader K-Line Filter 1.25″ (double stacked) mapped to cyan, ZWO IRpass 850 mapped to orange, 3x Barlow, TS-Optics 76/342 TS76EDPH, mountpusher, EQ3-mod
ASI 178MM (cooled), Lunt CaK B600 LS6CAKMDS2, Skywatcher 72/420 ED-APO, mountpusher, EQ3-mod
One day before the closest encounter, because of the clouds. Seen through ASI 178MM (cooled), ZWO IRpass 850 1.25″, TS-Optics 76/342 TS76EDPH, mountpusher, EQ3-mod
At 13:43 local time, I had the first light with the new ASI 485 MC camera. Although the new driver made it visible in sharpcap 3, it only worked correctly in sharpcap 4.
ASI 485 MC, first light, UV-IR-cut, GSO 3x APO barlow, TS-Optics 76/342 TS76ED, mountpusher, EQ3-mod, ersatz-obsi
I used the following gear: MC102/1300, 2x barlow, UV/IR cut, ASI 462MC and the TS-Optics 76/342 TS76EDPH, with the filterwheel, and ASI 178MM with a 3x ED barlow, both — one after the other — mounted onto the EQ3-mod with the mountpusher.
Since the phase of Venus doesn’t favor observing its clouds, and the seeing was really bad, I opted for the IR850-pass, and the solar continuum filter to minimize the atmospheric effects. Five minutes for each.
Venus, ASI 462MC
Venus, solar continuum, ASI 178MM
Venus, IR850, ASI 178MM
EQ3-mod, MC102/1300, IR pass 650, automated filter wheel, ASI 178MM (cooled), ersatz-obsi, mountpusher
IRpass 850
Using the ASI 178MM (cooled) and ASI 462MC (cooled), with various barlow setups, for Venus the Baader K-Line Filter 1.25″ (double stacked), TS-Optics 76/342 TS76EDPH, mountpusher, EQ3-mod, I observed Venus, Jupiter and Saturn, as best as possible with the rather modest setup and inadequate ersatzobservatory, which isn’t even an observatory, just a good patch of sky and an open window. Still, I got maybe some detail on Venus, Jupiter’s clouds with Io’s shadow and Io, and Saturn with the Cassini gap, give or take. Thank you, real estate maffia, thank you.
Jupiter and Io
Venus, 2021-08-15 through a solar continuum (green) filter
Alright, let’s go after Venus with whatever I have at hand. The local time is 16:45 (13:45Z), Venus is at around the meridian at around 45 degrees high. Behind a brightly lit blue void. The available rig: ASI 120MM (cooled), Baader Solar Continuum Filter 1.25″, barlow lenses, TS-Optics 76/342 TS76EDPH, mountpusher, EQ3-mod. Fun part: the bright sunlight and the bright blue sky made it next to impossible to spot Venus, using a mount that’s not properly aligned, thus almost no coordinates. However, I cheated. I used the Sun — fairly easy to find — to get an idea about the RA of the unaligned mount, drew lines onto the mount (it has seen worse), and I hacked together a few lines of arduino with a dev board and an MPU 9250 to show me the attitude of the scope. Have I mentioned how handy these little ESP32 dev boards are, and how arduino in general solves decade old problems, making the pedestal of obscurity embedded is in general shake a wee bit? However, I feel literally, physically tired of having to outsmart and circumvent, or just brute force every possible issue the universe (or better call it real estate maffia, then govid-19, among other issues) has in store for my hobby. Given the instruments, this picture is nowhere near the quality of my epic Venus season.
Venus, Oiii and CaK
I used my usual Venus gear: EQ3 with the added ST4 port, N150/750, filterwheel, OIII + VenusU and CaK, ASI 178MM cooled.
(tovább…)
OIII-CaK bicolor
Venus: EQ3, soapbox, N150/750, CaK + OIII, ASI 178MM c
Jupiter, Saturn: balcony-observatory, HEQ5, soapbox, N250/1200, ADC, ASI 224MC c
