This is an overprocessed image of Mars, taken from Western Washington on January 22 at roughly 6:45 p.m. It was taken with an 8 inch Meade LX200, using a DSI Pro II CCD camera, 8 second single exposure. Please click to continue reading as I'm very puzzled by this image.

At first, I thought collimation. But even though there are numerous reflection images here, they appear to be concentric, the central image appears to be evenly centered. I've also taken some good pictures with this telescope, the Comet Holmes picture being just one of them. So if not collimation, what could cause this?

A clue may be the weather? I'm just speculating, and asking you if you have any ideas. I put the telescope outside at 4:45 p.m. The temperature was about 39. The telescope came from an inside room where the temperature is warm, seventy plus. I put the telescope out early to let the temperature stabilize. However, the outside temperature plummeted very quickly - going from 39 to about 25 in two hours. On top of that, I had a Kendrick dew heater strap wrapped around the corrector plate, set on "low."

So now I've laid it all out - the equipment used, the weather conditions, etc. What do you think? Collimation? Weather? Other? I'm hoping there's nothing wrong with the telescope. Please weigh in here or through email if you have any ideas. Thanks much.

Posted by Jim W Coleman at 07:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)