Equinox 120ED and DBK21

Last Friday,18th September 2009, I got a chance to use the Equinox 120ED and Imaging Source DBK21 and DMK41 in the field. The sky condition was exceptionally good. I went to Pak Tam Chung at about 10:00pm after monitoring my daughter’s homework. Since I got lot of outstanding tasks, time was limited for me. I planned to image the Jupiter and one to two deep sky objects, but I end up with the Jupiter only. The main reason was that I was inexperience in handling the Imaging Source camera. I’ve learnt the basic of how to image Jupiter from David, but lack practice. This was the first time I use the DBK to image Jupiter. I knew some crucial parameter in imaging the Jupiter. However mirror setting could ruin the photo! It takes time to learn and art cannot be rushed!

When I arrived PTC, I started the setting at once. I was kind of slow and inexperience in setting up the equipments. Since this telescope was a rare species in PTC, It attracted some stargazers. Finally when the setting was done, we viewed Jupiter. Everyone was amazed by the 120ED. Mirror God used his, prestigious telescope tester, Takahashi 3.6mm eyepiece, to test the Equinox 120ED. Here was his exact wording:

"Hmm... 幾好幾好！真係唔錯！雖然唔係一級的鏡，只是色差差少少！好少！只係輸比Astrophysics少少！想不到兩枚玉都有咁好performance！"

This was not the end of the story. When I finished the setup of DBK 21, the movie shocked everyone. It was because I was green in setting the DBK, everyone knew it when they saw my clumsy acts, but the movie was quite sharp already before stacking. It was good because the seeing & transparency were good. These unleashed the power of Equinox' optics and the power of DBK's electronics. My comment is that Equinox 120ED delivers high contrast, high color saturation and high resolution images in its own class. The color was a bit warm and yellowish in viewing Jupiter. The price is good. No complain for such performance price ratio, $13800 for a 120ED! If one wants to take serious photos, a Feather Touch focuser is needed, perhaps a high quality reducer. I am still very busy on school’s work and no time to learn how to stack the photos. The photo below is just a default click-click-click output of Registax 5.0. I will process it seriously later.

Jupiter, Equinox 120ED, TV 5X, DBK 21

Sidewalk Astronomy and Telescopes Watching

Last night neither transparency nor seeing was good. However, it was a year of International Astronomy’s monthly activity, sidewalk astronomy. The activity was held in Tin Shui Wai, which is far away from Tseung Kwan O. I was happy to join the activity because my wife decided to go with me. When we arrived virtually all the telescopes were pointing to the moon. This was the brightest object that could amaze the general public. The most interesting thing for me to join this activity was I can have a chance to try different telescopes. The biggest telescopes are always eye-catching, the TMB 8” APO and the Takahashi M-250. Just an impression, the TMB 8” APO gives better contrast. I couldn’t tell the different between sharpness because they were using different eyepieces and the magnifications were different. Anyway the Ethos eyepiece was impressive in terms of view angle. I just wonder my eye’s view of view is too small compared with Ethos FOV! It just gave you a feeling of cruising around the moon. One cannot describe the FOV of an airplane’s window! Well all these, 8” APO, 10” Takahashi and Ethos, are expensive. I deliberately look at some down to earth telescopes. Believe it or not, Sky-Watcher 5” Maksutov-Cassegrain was really good. The image of the moon was crispy and the contrast was high. I remembered once there was a used one in the forum a few months ago. The owner asked for $1700 if I remembered correctly. Hmm…. I missed a chance.

TMB 8" APO

Takahashi M-250

After I walked around for a while in Tin Shui Wai, I decided to go to have my own star gazing. I rang my friend Lewis and our destination was Lung Ha Wan. We arrived at Lung Ha Wan at about 10:30pm. But the favorable location was occupied by some midnight divers! Gee! We wanted to try a new location, but it was just being occupied by others! Anyway, Lewis and I looked around and see if it was a good location for star gazing. But sky was very hazy and we could only see the Vega, the Jupiter and the moon. As there were no favorable car parks, we decided to go to good old Pak Tam Chung.
When we arrived Pak Tam Chung, there were no star gazers! I was fooled by those posts in the forum. Maybe everyone went to Tin Shui Wai. Well! We two lonely twins stated to setup our scopes and practice. The sky condition became very bad. When we arrived we could see the blurred moon, the fading Vega, the dim Polaris and Perhaps the bright Jupiter. I tried to setup the HEQ5Pro as quickly as possible. At the point I wanted to do the polar alignment, the Polaris was gone! So I used the compass to solve it. Unexpectedly the alignment done was quite good. The tracking of Jupiter was good. We shot the Jupiter with different imaging device, D90, 450D, SPC900NC and LPI. Both D90 and 450D have life-view which was very useful in focusing. But all the photos taken by D90 were unsatisfactory! We don’t know clearly why D90 failed. Maybe it was because of the flip mirror of D90 in the life-view mode flips before the release of the shutter, while 450D not. The small vibrations of flipping the mirror caused the burred images. As a Nikon user, I need to figure it out! This needs another investigation. My second task was to align the NexStar 4SE mount. It just couldn’t track the sun probably during the recent solar eclipse. I believe that ex-owner didn’t get it alignment in 2-star alignment or 3-star alignment once. According to the manual, one needs to get NexStar alignment once with at least 2-star alignment once before it works properly. However the noxious clouds covered the sky. You know! Finally I gave up and went to have dessert in Sai Kung. Today I tried to process my photos. I still don’t know how to use Registax. The photos shown were just click-click-click product.

Jupiter: C5, TV 2.5X, ISO 1600, 1/25, 450D

Jupiter: C5, TV 2.5X, ISO 1600, 1/25, D90

Jupiter: C5, SPC900NC, 1200 frames, Registax

Jupiter: C5, TV 2.5X, SPC900NC, 1200 frames, Registax

Planetary imaging

After observed and shot Jupiter and Saturn several times with Equinox 80ED, I found that the 500mm focal length was not long enough for planetary imaging. The image on the sensors was so small! So I brought my C5 back home and tried to shoot Jupiter early this morning. The focal length of C5 was 1250mm. The image was much bigger. The result was not bad to me. One could see the color fringes of Jupiter. Since I am not familiar with RegiStax 5, I just use the default values and click the program until I get the final product! Better results can be achieved if I spend more time to play with RegiStax 5.

Saturn: 8-7-2009, 20:58, Tseung Kwan O, Equinox 80ED, Porta, ToUcam SPC900NC, 300 Frames, RegiStax 5, PS CS2
Jupiter: 9-7-2009, 5:36, Tseung Kwan O, Equinox 80ED, Porta, ToUcam SPC900NC, 300 Frames, RegiStax 5, PS CS2

About the image quality, although I used C5 instead of Equinox 80ED to do planetary imaging, it does not mean Equinox is no good. The prime reason was that a high power telescope is needed for such task. While waiting for my Meade 8 ACF, C5 is now the instant supplement. Well! Doing visual observation and astrophotography are different stories. The Equinox 80ED gives excellent visual images. I can see color fringes on the Jupiter and 4 satellites. The images are crispy, high contrast and saturated compared with those visual images on C5. However, when the image is projected on the webcam sensors, it was too small even TV 2.5X was used. So the simple solution to planetary imaging is high power telescope. I guess this conclusion is known to most stargazers. But I learned this by experiencing it!

During the observation, I tried to push the Equinox 80ED to limit. The target was Jupiter. The seeing was average. I used a 2mm eyepiece making the magnification to be 500/2 = 250X. The image was blurring, but acceptable. I could see the color fringes on Jupiter. By using the TV 2.5X, the magnification was boosted up to 625X. The image was garbage. It was just a blur disc! No details or color variation can be seen. Next I used the 8-24mm Zoom eyepiece and the TV 2.5X. The magnification at 8mm was 500/8*2.5 = 156X. Apart from dimmer image, the details and the contrast of the image were good. Pushing the magnification of Equinox 80ED to 200X is not a problem to me. (Note: The factory claimed the highest practical power is 160X.) Ah! This conclusion tempts me to buy the versatile TeleVue 3-6mm Zoom Eyepiece.

Jupiter: 14-7-2009, 5:19, Tseung Kwan O, C5, Porta, ToUcam SPC900NC, 400 Frames, RegiStax 5, PS CS2

Jupiter: 14-7-2009, 5:21, Tseung Kwan O, C5, TV 2.5X, Porta, ToUcam SPC900NC, 400 Frames, RegiStax 5, PS CS2