From: "Tim" <tjp314@pacbell.net>
Date: October 26, 2005 11:23:40 AM MDT
To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Marine Layer in So. Cal.
Well, I had a few hours of clear sky last night. If it hadn't been for equipment problems and
recentering Mars everytime I "undewed" my corrector, I'd have had more to talk about.
What I did try was using a lower power projection. I'd been using the 5X powermate, which
made Mars about 160-170 pixels across, or about 1/8" per pixel. Contrast at that scale was
low and detail in my poor to so-so seeing was pretty soft, so I decided to bump it down a bit.
Well, the only other option I had was a couple 2x shorty barlows, and stacking them gave me
about the same image scale as the 5x, so I removed the lens from one, put in a 2 degree
PADC to add more projection distance and reduce atmospheric dispersion some, but the
image scale is still too small. I have a 2.5X Televue and an old Meade 3x, but they were with
my other scopes in my basement, and that's 3 floors down and around the back of the house,
and I didn't want to wake anybody up running up and down the stairs.
It was interesting, though. Definitely able to process a sharp image in poor seeing better
than at the larger scale.
The results are on my home computer, so I'll have to process them and uplink the best this
evening.
-Tim.