And here I am with three of our WWOOFers using the Telescope and enjoying the results of my labours. It is a perfect quiet evening here in West Cork, with no clouds in site.
Finally I got the inside of the glass on the front of the scope cleaned with 50% Isopropyl Alcohol and Water. Getting the glass off was tricky, requiring steady pressure from something which would not crack the glass. I found this YouTube Video which showed how to do it. the glass was pretty dirty inside which I find surprising. A sort of pale brown film. I took the opportunity to clean the mirrors too, but there was no dirt there.
Then I aligned the scope using Polaris having first aligned the scope exactly with the forks. The bottle screw on the wedge was a blessing to say the least. A brilliant design. My thanks to Peter Marren for this idea. The adjusting the motor drive was another marathon. There is a coarse and fine adjustment which took several hours of trial and error to get it right.
I do not have a dedicated camera system, nor the recommended filters to reduce atmospheric aberrations at my latitude, Early days.....
My first attempt was in June 2024 using my Infrared Camera which has a 630nm IR filter in place. I took some video, then post processed it in AstraStak and Gimp. Click the image to see a larger file.
Then I had another attempt a few days later. This time taking several videos to join together to show the whole of the visible moon. Click the image to see a larger file.
Then in November one of our Austrian friends took some video and stills using her mobile phone hand held over the eyepiece. Very difficult, but here are the results. Click the images to see a larger file.
In 2025 we had a little get together with friends to admire several planets all in a line. Click the images to see a larger file.
We could see the bands on Jupiter, but they did not come out in the camera, possibly because the focus was not absolutely correct. These imnages were taken with Susy's Olympus OM-10 camera which has not been converted to Infrared, so shows colour as it should.
Venus is nice with the crescent shape
Saturn's rings are almost edge on, so difficult to see.
I managed to catch a break in the constant rain and cloud todat 2025-02-14 to get more images of Mars, Jupiter and Venus. Here is one of Jupiter:
Here is the same image from the Stellarium, software - Rather nice!!!
Unfortunately despite being able to see the banding on Jupiter in the telescope, the images from the camera are overexposed. They are sharp though. I cannot change the video exposure on the camera, so the next step is to get a bracket of my mobile phone and use that instead. Or get a dedicated USB camera. Food to thought.