Mini-review of Glatter Parallizer

As a planet imager I am obsessed with accurate collimation. One of the many sources of error lies in the lose fit between a 1.25" adapter and the 2" focuser, and lose fit between the 1.25" collimator and the adapter. In the past I would solve this by shimming the adapter (with tape) and the barrel of my laser collimator, making the fit so tight that I had to put the shimmed 1.25" adapter in the freezer to be able to insert it in the 2" focuser tube! That also meant I could not remove the adapter in the field.

My recently aquired Glatter Parallizer has solved my problems. While I have not done any extensive testing, I can tell that it gives me about the same accuracy as I could achieve with my best shimming efforts. What remains of wobble is probably inherent in the focuser and laser collimator. The design is remarkably simple, just an angled setscrew and outer surface that isn't quite round. The "manual" is equally short; just one sentence!

Recent images

Just a couple of my better Mars images, and a Saturn...

 

New camera problem

My new DBK618 camera has a problem with gridlines at 60 fps. I posted about this over in the Imaging Source forum a couple of weeks ago, and they are (still) looking into the problem. One of the big selling points of this camera is its (supposed) 60 fps capability without artefacts. The model it surpasses, the DBK21, was also supposed to support 60 fps, but eventually it turned out that it produced a "ring"-artefact at this frame rate. It is therefore disappointing that once again this new model does not function properly at 60 fps. It is also surprising that nobody else have reported this problem before, as the camera has been on the market for more than 6 months. After I reported my problem at the forum, a couple of other owners of the camera have reported the same problem. Nevertheless, the results so far (at 30 fps) seem to be significantly better than my old DBK21. 

Below is Mars from a 60 fps capture (sharpened and resized by 2X). It does not matter which DeBayer method I use, the gridlines are always there. Multipoint alignment will partially solve/mask the problem, probably because different parts of the planet are moved around a little relative to each other, and blended in a way that hides seams and averages out some of the gridlines. Still, it is not a good solution. 

First light with new camera

About a week ago I received my new camera; a DBK 21AU618.AS. It has the Sony ICX618 chip, which is a big improvement over the old ICX098 that was in my old camera (and my old Toucam web camera). The seeing did not cooperate, so these images are rather poor. Without further ado; first light: 

An unexpectedly good Jupiter

I made these images from a couple of videos that seemed rather average; I even told people the conditions had not been good this night, and the whole trip was not worth the effort. That was before I started processing the videos. I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of detail that popped out during sharpening. The DIMM seeing at the time was also unimpressive, only 1.3 arcsec, but I guess there were enough good frames interspersed among the blurry ones to get a good result. Captured from Ederi, Dec 03 2011. 

A short video is avilable at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8HY_1zHq_w

Two Jupiters and a double star

A couple of Jupiters captured some time ago. First, a big Jupiter from back in September on a night of good seeing. I spent the night at Agios Pnevmatos above Rethymnon, and the views were magnificent. My mirrors were however rather dirty, and although one always hears that it is not possible to see any difference between a very dirty and a clean mirror, the camera certainly noticed a difference. For this picture I tried the de-rotate function in WinJupos. It improved the details on the disk  but caused a ring to be visible not far from the edge of the planet.

My second picture is from Oct 22, just after I cleaned the mirrors. I could use less gain in the camera after cleaning, and the contrast was better. The transiting moon is Io. Captured from my terrace.

Lastly, in a departure from the usual planet images, I present an image of one of the pairs in the "double-double". Is the collimation a bit off perhaps? That's all :-)

Jupiter from Chania

Lately I have been exploring new locations in order to find better seeing. In the hills just south of Rethymnon I found reasonably good seeing (~ 0.8 arcsec) on two out of four nights, and the one night I spent on Sklopa near Chania the seeing was also good. The below image is from Sklopa, a slightly risky location perhaps, since photography is prohibited near the airport and military base. Captured on Sep 3, 2011, at 01:52 UT.