From: Milton Aupperle <milton@outcastsoft.com>

Date: March 7, 2010 2:52:37 PM MST

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: [Astro_IIDC] New DSO Images

Hi Mark;

On 7-Mar-10, at 2:27 PM, Mark Gaffney wrote:

They`re great Milton!

I have a Hubble image of the Black Eye Galaxy on a new app on my iPod Touch. It almost seems to be turning slowly!

With my imaging I`ll probably have to use my spotlight on the shipping container method for aligning the finder with the camera`s offset. The moon is rising too late now to do it for M 42. I checked the spotlight solution (shining it on the small sign on the container about 80 metres distant) from the scope the other night in a brief non rainy period & it can be seen alright. Would 80 metres be OK to give such a finder alignment do you think?

You will get some error because they aren't far enough away to be parallel. I use construction cranes on the other side of the valley 2+ km away initially at dusk, and then center on a nice bright star to fine tune.

Unless your being really rough with your scope, you should not need to align the finder each time, especially since your primarily shooting with a 0.3x focal reducer.

I only wind up doing this if I have dismantled the scope for transport.

Milton Aupperle