Erik wrote:
I wonder if your camcorder would even work on the Grim. Is the focus point the same as for most eyepeices? It might be interesting to hook it up prior to Star Party and project Saturn or Jupiter on a computer screen. Perhaps there will be an event to podcast sometime.
Although it was clouded out in and out of the observing frame for Utah, an amateur in Florida recorded this video of last weekends occultation of Antares (mag 0.9-1.1) by the Moon using a digital cam corder afocally withe a Celestron 8. The conditions of occultation are analogous to the LCROSS impact. As you can see in the video, he had little problem capturing both the bright disk and the star. My computations for the LCROSS impact curtain brightness are between mag 0 and mag 5, so I don't think capturing the plume will be problem using a modern digital video camera and a 1 meter aperture from a contrast or brightness perspective. The constraint will be poor resolution from bad low-altitude seeing. - Kurt http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IrLdOqDcK0 Antares Occultation astroguyz June 06, 2009 An occultation of the bright star Antares (Alpha Scorpii) on June 6th, 2009 as seen from Hudson, Florida.