On the day before (29th) I had finally received a parcel of various astro goodies which I had orderd, including  a 3x barlow.

Naturally this had to be tested out however he RC6 that I had also ordered didn’t make it in this delivery, so it was down to testing with the Skywatcher ED80 refractor.

After setting up the scope and running a couple iterations of alignment and polar align things were tracking pretty well so the first stage of the evening was of course prime prime focus with the ASI120MC-S targeting the Moon, just to test that it was working and that I was pointing in the right direction. Then it was time to include the 3x barlow to see how that worked.

Once I was happy that things were focused and working it was time to slew to Jupiter which was standing high and proud just west of the zenith.  Even on the ED80 the 3x barlow definately improved the image compared to what I had been able to manage previously, if you look closely Io is also making a showing in the bottom of the frame :

The final part of the planetary excursion for the evening was a quick capture of Venus which was sitting low in the west by this stage, just above the neighbors house, which didn’t do anything to help the viewing conditions.  Even with the 3x, the image scale for Venus was seriously lacking.  the video was very unstable hence a very unclear disc in the final stacked image:

By this stage it was time to change to some longer exposure DSO imaging.  Although Saturn was well and truly up by this stage I wanted to save something for when the RC6 arrives.