Mooning around

I've had the opportunity over the past few days to use a Skymax 102. And amazingly the skies have played ball. It's a very compact little scope, which is pretty light, but with a stonkingly long focal length for the tube size, making it marvellous for the moon. As the scope didn't arrive with any accessories, I've put the celestron 6x30 finder on it, it seems to be working nicely so far.

Well in my normal way, having spotted the moon in the clear blue sky on Thursday, I popped the Skymax on a camera tripod, put the 450d at prime, no teleconverter needed here, as the focal length is 1300mm, and grabbed a shot. Focusing isn't the easiest of tasks, the focuser is mounted at right angles to my refractors, but I think I got to grips with it.



As the night drew in, the skies remained clear, so I mounted the Skymax on the NexStar, I have to say this is a very lightweight combination, which is a good thing, and went out for some playing with my webcam and some observing.

I had intended to have a go at getting some more of the Lunar 100 targets, but set the mount up too low, so I couldn't observe comfortably as it was hurting my back, I need to adjust a little more. Anyway what I did see through th 5mm Hyperion was quite astonishing (it overpowers the scope a bit, and I think I really need about a 6.5mm for optimum power, but it worked).

I put the webcam in, seeing wasn't too good, but I managed to achieve focus. And shot of a few sequences of avi's, they were stacking in Registax 5, with wavelets, then a small tweak in GIMP

A couple of Clavius
340 of 800 frames


866 of 2000 frames


Then onto the mountains...
Alpes 1378 of 1492 frames


and Apennines 526 of 652


I did try to get in even closer with the Ultima barlow, but everything became too wobbly to be able to focus. At that point, after a lot of trying with the Ultima, I gave up, popped the 450d with a 2xTC in and took some frames to try and stack with Registax 5. I've so far been able to get anywhere with doing this, it may be because it's in beta.

After capturing those, I gave up, ice was forming on everything including me.

Then yesterday afternoon, there were some cloud gaps, showing the moon nicely. So I once again grabbed the Skymax, popped it onto my camera tripod, and grabbed a shot with the 450d. I turned the camera a little to frame it better



I think this is a lovely little scope, and I will buy it for the price I've been offered for it.