I sold all my old astro kit and moved to a smaller but pricier kit. This was to make it easier to set up and enable me to take it with me on trips to darker sites.
I now own a Williams Optics Zenithstar 61 APO, a Skywatcher Star Adventurer and a Velbon video camera tripod. As always, there is never an opportunity to try out your new kit due to cloudy skies so I waited patiently and used it as a terrestrial lens. This however, needed a larger focal tube so it is fine when trained from indoors to the bird feeder but not for gusty nights in the garden!
Anyway, I bought a night-glow / moon filter and as the evening was clear on the 16th AND I didn't have to get up early the next day I went to try it out.
The session was purely to familiarise myself with what did what and did all the pieces I have bought to complement the kit; star diagonals etc work well. I will say that I experienced a lot of frustration previously due to the amount of connecting rings to ensure everything would fit.
I have to say, first light was impressive. I was only out until midnight due to another larger clouds coming over but was pleased with what I saw. My initial thinking is that I cannot shoot afocal with an EP in the focal train as I don't have a extension tube long enough nor, as you can see by picture above, would it be practical. This assumption may change as I get used to using everything. As it is the camera is almost attached directly to the scope with just a filter in the focal train.
So, until I can figure it out it will be used as a fixed lens for all my future astrophotgraphy at around 250mm given the sensor size I have.
The moon was quite low and there was quite a residual heat haze so I'm confident I couldn't have got the image any clearer but what I noticed straight away was the quality of glass. The image was crystal clear when looking higher in the sky.
So here is yet another moon picture from me, a little soft focussed and I have edited quite heavily to show the topography of the moon but hopefully this is yet another turning point for me to embrace the hobby and ultimately capture the odd galaxy and a nebula!
Olympus OMD EM10 MkI 1/25 sec ISO 400
Al
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