Last week I was finally able to take some time off work and get away from Jakarta to take The Monster down to visit his Grandparents in South West Western Australia – of course there was also an ulterior motive to the trip.
Over the past several months I have been slowly accumulating a second imaging rig by buying a mount and OTA second hand on iceinspace.com.au, as well as various other bibs and bobs from the usual online suspects, and having the proceeds of these purchases shipped to the folks to hold for me. This trip down doubled as my first chance to assemble and play with this new kit.
Celestron 9.25 SCT on SkyWatcher EQ8 mount bought individually second hand and shipped to “The Farm”.
Once I got the Monster to the Grandparents and the chaos settled down, I was informed that the “rent” for having used their place as a delivery depot was that I had to put on an astronomy evening at the school where GranPa is a teacher as it was the first week of term and the Year 10’s (15 year olds) were starting the Astronomy component of their course, Naturally I was more than happy to oblige as it gave me another reason to play with the gear !I
The evening ended up going very well with around 30 students and parents turning out, the skies were clear and steady, the Moon, Saturn and various other targets were all in good position and, most importantly, the gear worked flawlessly.
During the evening I swapped between visual eye piece viewing to video capture via the canon DSLR displayed on a large screen tv using tethering with BackYardEos in control of the camera. While the tv viewing was appreciated, it was the views through the eyepiece which really got the response. The moon through the Vixen 20mm was crystal clear and the contrast absolutely superb once the sun had set, if rather bright as I don’t have a moon filter – something to add to the kit for the future. Saturn through the 6.7mm amazed with the clear definition of the rings crowning the planet. Naturally everyone had to get pics using their phone through the eyepiece :
The Moon by Samsung S7 afocally through 20mm eyepiece while still daylight
Having the DSLR attached at times did allow for capture of some imaging to be able to show those who hadn’t been able to make it for the night.
It was at this stage that I regretted not having brought the ZWO 120 planetary cam and the power-mates down with me as I was restricted to the DSLR at the native f10 2350mm focal length of the 9.25 SCT for Saturn, but all in all for a first real test of the new kit I couldn’t be happier.
The eventual plan for this equipment is to set up a remote obs in the back paddock of The Farm, still working on convincing the owners (parents) that this is a good idea 🙂 …. stay tuned.