Wednesday, November 01, 2006

The sky was teasing at dusk, clear blue skies all day and just as it was getting dark, clouds appeared from nowhere! I kept an eye open though and just after 7.00pm it looked like it would be worth setting up the scope.

The polar alignment was getting a bit easier but it's still not perfect, time will tell.

Anyway took a couple of tracked pics of the Pleaides but not that impressive yet..



So then I tried to locate the Double Cluster in Perseus, not an easy task with the scope, actually it's probably easier with the Monocular. After a few minutes I had what looked like a likely suspect.




The problem I have at the minute is that the camera adaptor for the scope actually uses part of the 1.25" EP holder. In order to attach the camera you have to unscrew the EP holder from its base plate and screw the base plate to the T Adaptor for your camera model. This means that swapping from an EP to the camera is not very slick.

So I end up scoping for targets through the camera viewfinder which is quite dim and very difficult to focus unless you have a bright star like Vega to focus on.

I need to find out if I can buy an additional base plate, of course I will probably have to buy a complete EP holder, that way I can switch from EP to camera relatively quickly.

2 comments:

  1. Found your blog while looking for information about the Double Cluster (for a reason unconnected with astronomy). Great pictures!
    Elizabeth

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Elizabeth, I can't wait to hear why you were searching for the double cluster without it being related to astronomy!

    ReplyDelete