Saturn has been high above the horizon for several months now, but my location faces West and I’ve had to wait for the ringed planet to climb higher and higher until it was visible above the roof tops at a sensible hour. It was early March 2007 before I finally managed to start taking video before midnight. At first I tried to use the 1004x with a skyglow filter but Saturn is far too bright for that and although several moons are visible, no ring definition can be seen. I then attempted to use the ICE CM2XUTP which although mains powered wasn’t too much trouble to setup. The large CCD made the planet seem much smaller than it had with the 1004x and I just couldn’t seem to get a clear image. The Ice camera has adjustable shutter, automatic gain and lots of other options that I haven’t tried yet. |
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| I decided the 2x barlow that came with my first scope was the limiting factor and bought a 3x barlow from Astronomica for just £19. Wow, nice big picture but it zooms across the screen in about 10 seconds so focusing becomes a bit tricky. I find it easier to focus on Venus first and get the diffraction spikes as clear as possible, then lock the focus and turn the scope back to Saturn. My focuser seems to move at an angle, as I focus in the image moves up to the right and focus out moves it down to the left.
I retrieved my Trust camera from the bottom of a box, I’d been using my only Mogg adapter on the 1004x so had to swap it back before I could try this camera. With the less sensitive CMOS sensor I was able to drop the contrast and brightness to bring out some detail and I’m sure I could see Cassini division on the screen, although this takes some processing to bring out in the final image. Finally after pushing the Trust camera to it’s limit I decided either my collimation was completely wrong (possible) or the camera couldn’t capture any more detail. After seeing the images being posted on the QCUIAG forum I gave in and bought a Philips SPC900NC. Apparently this is the old Toucam in a new shell and it was only £45 on Amazon. I’d seen lots of images captured with the Toucam’s and the SPC900NC but I was amazed at the difference in detail. Obviously the smaller pixel size helps but also the better dynamic range of the CCD.
The apparent image rotation shown in the images above is caused by me rotating the camera rather than some effect of my mount or scope. |
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