Last night, after resetting the Autostar controller to faculty defaults, my scope can now track objects in the sky automatically! This has made using more powerful eyepieces a possibility. Tracking Saturn by manually controlling the motors has been difficult. As soon as you take your eye off the planet to swap out an eyepiece, the planet disappears and finding it again is challenging, especially when decreasing the field of view dramatically with more powerful eyepieces.

Here is a picture of Saturn with using a 2x barlow lens in front of the webcam. Image has been adjusted for exposure.

(click here for source video)

So, a couple months ago, I got my first telescope, a 125mm (5") Meade ETX-125. I was fortunate enough to find one used on craigslist and thrilled to get such a nice scope for my first!

With the exception of a couple fluke warm days, I haven't been able to use it much. And for those of you in California, I don't want to hear about it! Yes, I know...it's cold here but at least the skies are clear and clean. ;-) Anyway, in the past couple days, I've been able to take some better shots of the moon and Saturn and thought I'd post them. And as long as you haven't ever opened a book or done an image search online, you'll think these pictures are impressive.

Moon, March 8th, 2009. (click image for more info/detail)

Saturn, April 8th, 2009. (click image for more info/detail and here for source video)

Saturn and its biggest moon, Titan, April 7th, 2009. (click image for more info)

 As the weather gets warmer and I get a better feel for what I'm doing, I'll post some better pictures.