David Lloyd-Jones - Astronomy
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Recent Activity

May 22nd 2021. Before the ZWO ASI294MC Pro camera arrived in September last year I had been used to using a 1 1/2 inch Baader Neodymium Moon and Skyglow filter with the GStar-Ex3 camera, So it was natural to get a 2 inch version of the same filter to take advantage of the wider field of view that the ZWO camera afforded. However in the hurley-burley of getting to grips not only with a new camera but also new software (SharpCap) I never could quite get the new filter to work properly. It always seemed to create an unwanted light gradient in the delivered image. After much angst and huffing and puffing I eventually put the problem into the too hard basket and consigned the filter to the back of a cabinet drawer in the observatory. Of course that meant that viewing / imaging in bright moonlight was a challenge and I ended up avoiding nights when the Moon was more than 1/4 full which severely limited the total acceptable observing time. Anyway, having by now pretty much digested the proper technique for creating suitable SharpCap flats for the camera without the filter I thought it was time to dig the filter out off the drawer and try again. And this time it worked! So I spent the rest of the evening happily viewing quite a few objects despite the Moon being 78% lit. This SharpCap screenshot showing Messier 17 illustrates the point.
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