After a rest of a couple of days, on a very clear and frosty evening (It was very slippery under foot), I decided to do some Moon images with my C11 and then once it got high enough, see if the extra light gathering of the bigger telescope would still enable me to image Webb.
I tried the new Video functionality in The AAP+, but using the full frame for the videos, the disk on the device was soon full.
The best images are shown below.
By the time Monoceros, where The Webb Space Telescope is currently located, I got the AAP+ to send the scope to the position given to me by ProjectPluto: https://projectpluto.com/sat_eph.htm
I have found this Web page to produce the most accurate positions for me.
Each time, Webb has been slap bang in the middle of the field of view.
It took me a while to find, it but it was definitely still there, despite competing with a bright gibbous Moon, not that far away from it.
Webb was a massive 778,296 miles from Earth at that time!
That really does blow my mind that we can image it from our own back gardens that far away. ?
I created my usual trail image from the resulting images, here’s the first one.
I lost some data when I lost contact with the AAP+ (Don’t ask!).
As I only set it to take 30 images, I lost some data before I got back into it and started taking more images.
I could see Webb was getting a bit fainter and looking outside, the corrector plate, despite the dew shield being fitted had started to dew over and I could see it was starting to get a bit misty.
So at that point I packed everything away and went to bed.
You can really see the changes in brightness as it moves across the image.
The fuller trail is here showing the gap in the trail.
(Sorry about the grid effect).
For a change, I thought I would create the animation locked on Webb’s position.
This shows the brightening really well, but the gap in the data is awful (Soz!). ?
