Since I'm still suffering from a heavy cold, I daren't spend long outside at night: however, the Jupiter / Saturn conjunction and a beautiful gibbous Moon was a great opportunity to try pairing up my new Maksuta 127 and Pentax DSLR. I never managed to get any worthwhile results with my previous 4" refractor, but the Moon was a cinch last night! I haven't yet worked out the right settings for the planets, but optically they were fantastic!
I'll need an hour or two on a clear night to get familiar with the alignment procedure - not having a permanent outdoor mount, I'll have to get speedy at doing this each time I go out! - then I can use the slow-motion drive and take stackable images. Similarly, the CMOS camera I've bought looks very promising, but is going to take some working out!
The large double crater in the second image is Gassendi, while Tycho and its bright rays are prominent in both...
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