I had the slides at the SLAS meeting but Dave didn't have the projector for his usual slide presentation so I did not show them. And when I got home and inspected them at high magnification I discovered the stars were all perfectly round donuts. Grumble. Suspecting (hoping) it might have been a problem with the film holder I modified it and dug out some very old Tri-X (more flashbacks Chuck?) and shot 4 five minute unguided shots of the area around NGC-2683. Using chemistry I'd mixed years ago I processed one of the shots and while the old chemistry didn't work all that great it worked well enough to be encouraging. So I mixed up new chemistry (ah, the smell of stop bath) and tonight developed the other three images. Despite being frozen, the 20+ year old film had degraded a bit but worked well enough to show me the camera is still focused and producing sharp results. So I guess today I'll go buy a fresh roll of film and see what kind of results I get. Here BTW is a 1200 DPI scan of one of the images I developed tonight: http://users.wirelessbeehive.com/~paw/temp/ngc2683.jpg Remember that the original is a single frame of 35mm film. Even blown up to the full size of the monitor the stars are still tiny and well focused. Now if a nice, bright comet would just stop by... patrick On 15 Mar 2009, at 23:03, Patrick Wiggins wrote:
As I enter this I've got the clock turned back 10 years in my observatory and photons from M-42/42 are falling on film in my Schmidt camera.
At least I hope that's the part of the sky I'm imaging. The camera has no viewfinder so one has to set it up, take a picture, develop the picture and then see where it's pointed.
And I forgot just how big a pain it is to insert the film carrier.
I'll be in SLC tomorrow and will see if I can find some place to process the film (Bill C., Does Inkley's still do E-6?). If nothing else, it'll be fun to walk into a camera shop and see the clerk's reaction to being presented with a roll of film. :)
Hopefully I'll find some place and will be able to pick up the finished product in time for Tuesday's SLAS meeting.
For those wanting more info on Schmidt cameras: http://www.robertreeves.com/repair.htm
Carpe Noctem!
patrick