All these pictures of Mars were taken at prime focus with a 10 inch Meade LX200 GPS telescope and a Logitech Quickcam Pro 4000.

These pictures were all created from 60 seconds long AVIs. The top 75 percent images were stacked - based on the quality as determined by the Registax freeware. Wavelet processing in Registax were also used. No other processing done - these are just quick experiments. So you will not find my prettiest pictures here, but experiments I did.

Here are the reasons for posting these quick and ugly pictures on my website as well.

5 June 2004 at 23:41 Moon 45 degrees high in sky	6 June 2004 at 00:54 Moon 61 degrees high in sky Clearly more detail visible compared to 45 degrees pic

Comparison of 1/25, 1/50 and 1/100 of a second exposures on the moon - prime focus.

Moon was between 56 and 59 degrees in altitude (from horizon) for the pictures below.

6 June 2004 at 00:30 1/25 second exposures	6 June 2004 at 00:35 1/50 second exposures
6 June 2004 at 00:39 1/100 second exposures

All these pics got identical treatment in Registax. It seems that 1/50 sec is better than 1/25 sec. It also seems that 1/100 sec is better than 1/50 sec.

This makes sense since shorter exposures allow less time for the atmosphere's turbulence to smear the images.

I will do more tests like this, since this looks like a worthwhile avenue for experimentation.

I did some other experiments as well. However, based on what I learned last night already, I will rather use that info. to better plan for tonight than to post the other experiments here as well.

Plans for tonight: determine how long moon and Jupiter can be exposed at prime focus and with 2x barlow before field rotation becomes an issue.