From: Mark Gaffney <markgaffney@me.com>

Date: March 7, 2010 4:34:38 PM MST

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: [Astro_IIDC] New DSO Images


Hi Milton, 

The finder is well lined up with the centre of the eyepiece- which I need initially to do my 3 star (or what-ever) alignment. I leave it out under the cover now all set-up. The problem here is that no land object at greater distance than about 80 metres (for the sign) or perhaps 100 metres (for some trees down the front) is visible any more. We used to be able to see the local television/ mobile phone etc. antenna some miles away but trees have grown up all round. I guess if the spotlight method won`t work, I`ll have to find a star with 4 x 4 binning (to start with) then line up the finder with that, in the absence of the moon...There dosen`t seem much prospect of doing anything at present with the weather here though..


Mark.

On 08/03/2010, at 8:52 AM, Milton Aupperle wrote:

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