Well, I saw the ISS with my eyes, but I mis-set the telescope for tracking and I was never able to catch up with it. I’ll have a couple more chances in the next few days so maybe I’ll get lucky…
Saturn was really the only thing bright enough to see through the wispy clouds. I had been anxious to try out the scope since I did a very thorough collimation and alignment of the scope. I wanted to see if it made a difference in the sharpness of my views and I believe it has. I’ve still got a bit of an issue at high magnification, but it’s really a lot better if tonight was representative.
After dialing in Saturn, I hooked up the LPI camera and took a few series of exposures of Saturn. Then, for comparison, I hooked up the DSI-II and took a bunch. Here’s a summary image of what I took:
You can see that the DSI does a really good job of getting more detail; it also has a greater depth of color. Overall, I think it’s the better camera for planetary images, which is ironic, since that’s kind of the purpose of the LPI, not the DSI. I don’t know though. Maybe I need to learn more about how to take better images with the LPI.
Well, it’s really too cloudy to stay outside, so I’m headed to bed.
