This shot of the mineral moon was a pretty neat "finis coronat opus" of an educational enterprise I took last night on my Bortle 8/9, lamp faced, balcony.
As you cannot reasonably collect data there I am usually devoting my time to learning and practice. This time I have been perfecting to get a balanced collimation on a GSO 10" RC scope using a full frame sensor.
The main goal was to make sure I know every step, touch exactly the right screw, and never do anything hectic. It was a 100% success even though a bit of clouds did come in to kill the party. What really surprised me, was the fact that the final iterations moved the central star by a mere 1/50th of the sensor and still gave noticeable changes on the fringes of the field! I don't see how perfect a laser or cheshire and focuser would have to be to reproduce these results.
Rev A: Sahara Dust Mineral Moon: 8% of 888 frames.
Rev B: Defocused starfield, around Capella (objective side, defocused toward the scope)
Rev C: Focused starfield, focal length measurement yield 2003 mm
Enjoy.
Comments