From: "milton_aupperle" <milton@outcastsoft.com>

Date: March 15, 2011 11:57:15 PM MDT

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: Firs Official Light with AT8RC

Hi Mark;

I'd more or less have to leave North America to find better skies. It's been an unusually poor year with record cold spells, record snow falls and high winds. Hopefully the spring and early summer will be better.

TTYL..

Milton Aupperle

--- In Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com, Mark Gaffney <markgaffney@...> wrote:

Milton, I hope this doesn't sound facetious but with your problems with the weather there in Calgary would it ever be feasible to move away from the place? 

I've just the other night made a reasonably successful 52 sub combined image of the Lagoon nebula using my new Skywatcher ED80 scope & old NexStar 4SE mount using 10 second exposures with my Nikon D5000 DSLR.

I won't inflict it on people here this time suffice to say it's been very encouraging for the future..

Nice moon image..everything as shipshape as we've all come to expect of you..!

Mark.

Sent from my iPod

On 16/03/2011, at 12:41 PM, milton_aupperle <milton@...> wrote:

Hi Folks;

Here is my official first light image taken with the Astro-Tech Ritchey-Chretien 8" scope at prim focus (1625 mm Focal length)

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Astro_IIDC/files/Lunar/Luna_20110314_MJA.jpg 

Shot with Grasshopper Mono 16 camera with no Filter, 4 ms exposures at 15 fps. Six 1384x1036 movies, stacked in Astro IIDC using 45 MAP per movie and sharpest 80 frames out of 330 to 400 frames per movies, results stitched together.

Seeing was mediocre with that fast high frequency shimmer from the Jet Stream. Here is a small 320x240 cropped portion around Clavius showing my seeing was like:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Astro_IIDC/files/Lunar/Luna_20110314_Clavius.mp4

As I said previously, that is basically the first image I've taken since December 2010.

TTYL..

Milton Aupperle