I ordered a Meade Series 4000 3X Barlow last week, and it arrived on Monday. Tonight was the first evening that I was able to try it out. I think I had the focus pretty good, but its possible I could have done better. I'll have more time to play with it, since it is supposed to be clear skies for the next few days. Seeing appeared fair, but the transparency was excellent. The Milky Way was visible it wass so clear.
Here are a couple of color images I took tonight with the new barlow. I did not take any monochrome, although I should have. I'll take a couple tomorrow night. Here are the images:
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| possibly poor focus |
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| camera zoom |
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this is the original size with the 3X.
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I used the 127mm. The effective focal length was 2100mm with the barlow. My little trick sliding the camera in and out of the barlow really helped with the focusing.
I also tried using the 3X and the 2X back to back, but the image was too dim to get a decent photograph. Notice on the 2nd image, the serpent storm is pretty clearly visible. I am surprised that the Cassini Division wasnt as pronounced this evening. Its possible I wasnt focused perfectly however, and that might be why. Is the barlow going to make a difference in the image quality? Right now, I'm not certain, the 2X may have the images at the limit of the telescope, but I thought being this is a much higher quality barlow than the 2X, that perhaps I would see a little more detail. The serpent storm is pretty well visible, so perhaps the quality has improved. It'll take a few more sessions to know for certain.
4 comments:
Very nice images. What kind of exposure/settings do you use? Do you use WcCtrl? I've always been into deep sky imaging, but your blog has inspired me to try imaging planets too.
These images use an exposure of 1/25 sec. AVI Frame rate 10 FPS, stacked in Registax. Capture and control all done in SharpCap. The camera was unmodified with the exception of the removal of the lens. An IR blocking filter was used. I need to do a writeup as to how I do these images, as a number of newcomers visit too. Would like to do some deep sky, but I must have messed up when I tried converting a Quickcam 4000, the camera didnt work after doing the mod. Fortunately I had a 2nd one.
I know what you mean, some tiny contacts in there. I LX modified a Phillips SPC900NC web-cam, but that's pretty easy to do relative to some of the other ones. Thanks for the info. that gives me a starting point and I'll experiment from there. Hopefully I'll get a little time on Saturday or Sunday night to give it a try.
I'm about to post a batch of 10 images I took tonight.
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