Imaging planets with the Maksutov

The skies were clear again tonight. However to avoid yesterday's fiasco, I waited until after 10pm before setting up to make sure the conditions remained good. Thanks to the 3D printed shoes on the EQ platform, I can put the tripod on it. It is not super stable however. When I reached the end of the course and did a reset, the telescope fell. I caught it before it hit the ground but the USB cable got bent were it connects to the camera. So it was almost a disaster.

My plan was to image the planets, so I installed the OCA. I calculated a focal length increase of only 1.12x (so turning the F/13 1300mm into a F/14.6 1456mm). So it was not as magnified as the Dobs with the Barlow which gives me 2.36x focal length increase (turning the F/5 1250mm into a F/11.8 2950mm). I should try different distances between the OCA and the sensor to see if I can get closer to the 1.6x it gives me with the binoviewers. But even at 1.6x it would be less than the Barlow on the Dobs so I should either get a 1.25" Barlow or a camera with smaller pixels.

I also tried the UV/IR filter I bought last year but I'm not sure it improved the picture. 

After watching some videos online, I figured out how to specify a region of interest (ROI) in ASICap. It makes the video file much smaller, the stacking faster and more importantly increases the FPS. High FPS is important with Jupiter because of the planet rotation. It's recommended to film the planet for no more than 90" to produce a clean stacked image. 

Finally, I experimented with FireCapture for the first time. It has a much richer GUI which I have just started exploring. Defining the ROI is better done than on ASICap and the ability to auto-center the ROI means that the drift of the planet is not an issue even with tiny ROI which allowed me to get higher FPS.

Observations

Jupiter 20% of 2152 frames

Saturn 20% of 1407 frames

Saturn 20% of 2366 frames (FireCapture)

Jupiter 20% of 4734 frames (FireCapture)