At long last I got clear skies this morning—and what a clear sky! WOW…seeing was awesome..at least a 8.5 or 9 out of 10. That front that came through yesterday/last night really stabilized everything.
I got the gear set up and after monkeying with inward travel on the focus for the webcam (I had to go waaaaay in from where my tests were conducted with the trees in the backyard yesterday, which I figured, but just not THAT much). But finally got Jupiter in the cross-hairs so to speak.
Unfortunately, everything was overexposed. Jupiter was a perfect white ball, and the Galilean moons were perfect white little spheres. But…no detail!!!
I tried using the Barlow but could not even find Jupiter. I think I need to get more inward travel to bring the barlowed FrankenCam to focus. There is that little black plastic pipe that I attached to the camera. I think I’ll take it off next time and see what happens as it adds a good 3-4 inches.
In my panic/frustration, I taped (yeah, taped—I’ve said before, there’s nothing but class with this rig) three different filters (a blue, a ND and my Crystalview Moon filter) to the end of the webcam tube (which of course required monkeying with the focus again). No, I didn’t tape all three together…though maybe I should?
The difference was instead of an overexposed Jupiter, I got a blueish tint to an over-exposed Jupiter. What gives?
The kids were stirring, my wife was leaving for work, before you know it, I was running out of time and switched to my Fuji film for some good shots afocal. I’ll process those and post them as I get time…
But now I’m starting to think it was the software settings in VirtualDub. Here is a screen capture of the default settings. Next time I will devote the entire session to messing around with getting the settings right (if I have to!). In my excitement to be back out under the stars, I rushed myself I think and spent more time fiddling with the Fujifilm camera afocally than worrying about the FrankenCam. Maybe some tea before I go out next time to help wake me up too.
Ah well, the clouds and another front rolling back in signal that I’ll have plenty of time to figure this out.
Oh, before I forget, there was one great thing I can report though: The Telrad base worked great! It was soooo easy to align the dob on Jupiter and keep it there. Way more convenient than the RA finderscope. I should have done this years ago! I love me some Telrad!