beautyintheuniverse's video: Jupiter Impact Caught

The scope was slipping (I was up near Palomer) so I basically had to babysit this the whole night, then it took a while to find some software to simply realign the frames. Currently uploading Ray Comfort discussion. (description will only take about half the journal entry for 22nd july) Then had a long chat with the camera man about the history of the earth (using the correlated history of earth poster). One by one I cut down the hovind arguments, and eventually all he had left was to simply say there are both sides of the argument. Its amazing testament to the feedback mechanisms of the mind, that even after the foundations of his belief had been systematically and academically removed till none remained that he was still sure that there was two sides to the argument. Then had another chat with ray, which I wish I had recorded.. mostly about the bible. The things I really remember was that Ray believes in witches, wizards, demons and sorcerers. Hmmm thats usually a end of conversation type moment. He also thinks that the holocaust was gods way of punishing the jews. I told him very clearly that that was not going to make him very popular if he voiced such opinions in public. Ray left and I spent an hour talking with his graphic design man. He clearly wasnt greatly interested in talking about points of contest, and we got on very well. He was a model maker and pilot. We talked teccie for an hour or so. A good guy! Out to the car in the heat of the day, and at a bit of a loss. Trolled around in the very busy traffic before giving up trying to find wifi and heading down towards Palomar. The traffic was incredible the real sacrifice that was made for coming to see ray was enduring the traffic. Stopped off for a bite of food, then up to the Big Scope. The road was long and winding. Very grateful for the GPS in the dark. Got to the campsite below the scope about 11ish. Clear skies and given the recent meteor impact on Jupiter I thought I would try my luck. 11in SCT set up was v. quick without the piggyback refractor. Seeing was okay, and great, there was a transit going on. Got the netbook and webcam out and got it recording. The scope, despite being well balanced is still slippling though. BITCH, sporatidically too, DOUBLE BITCH. Used about a 10mm plossel with the webcam on max resolution popping an image every 10s or so. Slipping seems to be mostly on azimuth (v. strage!.. I wonder if when I had my accident a year or so ago I dented or deformed something). Spent the first half of the night in a chair guiding it from the netbooks with a blanket. That got cold later though and I got a sleeping mat out (lying on the warm concrete was quite nice). Hard to stay awake, but managed to get lots of good imaged. All over the place though. Without some software for recentering this is going to be a pain in the ass to make. Ran low on netbook power in the night and had to get the boost from the powermate