From: Alan Friedman <alan@greatarrow.com>

Date: January 5, 2009 9:36:01 AM MST

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: [Astro_IIDC] DMK21BF04 expired?

Hi Jim,

I set my scope up in the early evening and went outside for a look around 11:00pm. I thought the image in the eyepiece at that time was a bit jittery, but it was clearly good seeing - I could easily see 6 stars in the trapezium at 100x which is much better than average.

When I got up at 4:30, the sky was completely covered in light hazy clouds. Saturn and Regulus were just visible to the naked eye close to the meridian. The image in the eyepiece was very nice, but too dim to make a good estimation of the seeing. There wasn't enough light for imaging with filters but I did shoot several streams - a 266ms shutter was needed, way to slow to produce a good picture. The sky cleared some around 5:30 but the seeing at that point was much worse.

This was my first opportunity to observe saturn this apparition. The thin rings and delicate shadow against the disk offset from the plane of the rings made for a real transformation since last year. I was very happy to just to get to see it.

best regards,

Alan

On Jan 5, 2009, at 8:23 AM, Jim Chung wrote:

Alan,

Sorry to hear about your camera problems.

I'm curious, earlier Saturday evening it looked like early Sunday morning would
be good for Saturn imaging here in Toronto but after midnight the seeing seemed
to deteriorate (about the time I packed it in after imaging M1 for 6h). Did you
have any luck with the mono ccd?

Jim

Quoting Alan Friedman <alan@greatarrow.com>:

> Hi Milton -
>
> The firewire port seems fine - communicates with the DMK41AF02 and my
> external firewire disks too. Just the DMK21BF04 is silent.
>
> thanks,
> Alan
>
>
> On Jan 4, 2009, at 5:16 PM, Milton Aupperle wrote:
>
> > Hi Alan;
> >
> >
> > Did you try any other FireWire device or perhaps a different Mac
> > with the Camera? Just in case it's your laptop and not the camera?
> >
> > Apple's track record for x86 Intel for FireWire has been pretty
> > crappy and sometimes the FW ports go dead. They can sometime be
> > revived by pulling the PRAM battery or zapping the PRAM to reset the
> > ports. For PowerPC resetting the Open Firmware usually worked too,
> > but that isn't an option for x86.
> >
> > HTH..
> >
> > Milton J. Aupperle
> >
> > On 4-Jan-09, at 3:12 PM, Alan Friedman wrote:
> >
> >> Thanks for the reply, Alberto - Yes, [sigh} I tested with several
> >> cables.
> >>
> >> Alan
> >>
> >>
> >> On Jan 4, 2009, at 3:57 PM, albe albo wrote:
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>