Archive for : March, 2013

Moon Mosaic with Altair Astro 8″ GSO RC

This was my first proper night out really trying out my new GSO 8″ RC from Altair Astro. I had attached the Lakeside Focuser, collimated the scope to the other scopes, finders and red dot finder. I had also managed to get the telescope collimation as good as I could so far by using a Cheshire and by doing a star test.

I was playing around noting down the focus positions of eyepieces, my imaging set up and the DMK21. So I decided to try and do some moon video with it.

There were 8 videos, producing 8 pieces of the mosaic. I used a DMK21 618 camera on it’s own, no Barlows or Powermates were used. I processed them using Registax 6 and then started to align them manually in Photoshop, but then remembered there was an automatic way of doing it – Photomerge. Within about 30 seconds the mosaic was automatically created for me.

Moon Mosaic with Altair Astro 8" GSO RC and DMK21 Camera

How to Find Comet Panstarrs C/2011 L4 in the Sky March 2013

As of yet I have not seen comet Panstarrs myself, but I shall be looking out for it in the next few days if we ever get any decent clear skies here in the UK.

So where do you look for it? Well you need to be looking to the Western horizon an hour or two after sunset. I have added some images below to help you.

Click on the images to enlarge them.

The first image is on 15th March 2013 @ 5.15pm

Comet Panstarrs C/2011 L4

This second image is for 16th March 2013 @ 6.15pm

Comet Panstarrs C/2011 L4