Observing Notes 7th June 2016 - Saturn and M29 Photography

Frustrating attempts at astrophotography again. I battled with my equipment and battled with intermittent high level cloud. Scope again was working a treat. Perhaps slew speed problems really are related to temperature? I think the low during last night's session was about 16C. Still needed the dew heater anyway.

Because I had nice views the previous night, I thought I'd have a go at imaging Saturn with the Nikon DSLR. No focal reducer, just diagonal and DSLR attached at the back-end via doubled x2 Barlows (so x4). I just had enormous problems getting Saturn to appear on the live view screen on the DSLR. I played with the focus back-and-forward, removed the whole setup and checked I hadn't left the plastic cover inside the first Barlow (as I have been known to do). Shone torch down the scope from the big end and that at least showed there were no major optical obstructions, the screen on the camera went very bright.

Finally figured out the solution. My plan was to take a short video of Saturn. To capture astro video on the DSLR I normally set the camera settings to manual video, so that I can override the shutter speed and take video at 1/60s when shooting at 25 FPS. But when trying to find Saturn in live view mode the camera is then set on 1/60s. Turned manual video mode off, set shutter speed to 5s and then Saturn appeared in the live screen. So, lesson to be learnt, when trying to get the planet to show in the screen on the back of the camera, forget the video settings to start with, set the shutter speed really slow 5s-10s and get the planet nicely centered in the camera screen. Once that is done, now start changing the camera settings to take live video.

Anyway, by that time I'd had enough mucking about with Saturn, so I just took a quick 2-minute video and moved on.

Had a go at imaging M29. I slewed to Deneb and tried to get the focus as good as I could by taking 5s exposures and adjusting the scope focus each time. I then slewed to M29.

But I had real problems getting the nice little cluster in the center of the DSLR image. This is not the first time I have had this problem, but I am new to DSO prime-focus photography. I was taking exposures but the cluster was half-off the FOV. I tried centering again and again in the finder, but I wasn't improving anything. Just getting half-decent images of half the cluster.

Cloud was increasing, so packed in for the night.

I have ordered a Vixen Flip Mirror Diagonal. We'll see if this helps me to get stuff in the center of the camera field of view.

Observing Notes 6th June 2016 - Saturn and M29

After two weeks of cloud we finally had a few hours of clear skies and I was able to get the scope out again.

Alignment etc. all went fine, no problems with slow slewing speeds or anything. We had some half-decent seeing, so like Bruce Springsteen at Wembley the night before I ditched my original plan and spent an hour viewing Saturn. Although it's quite low down in the SE sky, I actually had some decent views with the f6.3 focal reducer and the 9mm eyepiece (calculated magnification using the reducer x163). I could easily make out the Cassini division and with the eye of faith two belts on the planet itself. I also thought once or twice I could see the Encke Gap, but this may have been wishful thinking! Tried adding a x2 Barlow to the equation, but Saturn wouldn't take that much magnification.

I spent half an hour looking at the open cluster M29 in Cygnus. Had some beautiful views of pin point stars. The cluster reminds me of a mini "Big Dipper". Swapping to a higher power increased the contrast and I thought I could make out some nebulosity within the cluster. Cloud then shut down operations. But a satisfactory few hours. And at least it was warm and I wasn't freezing to death. Still needed dew heater on corrector though.