Monday, May 9, 2011

Day two—some success

The skies were very clear today, which gave me plenty of time to work out a lot of variables. I finally got the mount oriented correctly and the scope mounted properly. The tracking is off a bit but it's close enough for now.

As soon as I got it focused there was plenty to see. Lots of action on the limb with a big prominence that turned into a loop. A nice filament, some spots—all without even tuning the etalon! The detail really popped out with the 5mm eyepiece. I could clearly see the granulation.

I had plenty of time to fool around with my camera, which is a good thing because I couldn't make out anything on the LCD on the back. I finally resorted to putting a blanket over my head so that I could see the display more clearly but it didn't help all that much. I focussed it as close as I could and bracketed like mad. I managed to get some decent images but they don't show as much detail as I could see with the naked eye:

Click to enlarge

The illumination isn't even across the field. I noticed that while I was taking pictures and you can clearly see it here.

Best of all, there was crew here replacing the gutters. A couple of them took a look and were blown away. There's nothing more fun than showing off. I'll pounce on the neighbors as soon as they get home.


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