I won't go into the details here but needless to say we had a fantastic night. I spent most of the night trying out my new 50mm lens and hopping between Astro_souths 12.5" Dob and Astroron's 16" Dob. More of them elsewhere.
How did my new lens go. .....mmmmm....soso. For a cheap achro lens I suppose its not too bad. Terrible field curvature near the edges even stopped down a stop. May be better stopped down two stops. Fairly obvious chromatic aberation. Cheap and probably a good starters lens.
Anyway....lots of wide field shots taken Under excellent transparency, seeing only mediocre at around 3-4 out of ten. Wind was gusting quite a bit towards the end
. All at ISO400 at 240 sec. Anywhere from 3 to 8 shots per final image. Generally played with the stacking method using Registax, Imagestacker and PS. Most dark subtracted. Levels and cropping only in PS.
1. My first ever spotting of Andromeda Galaxy. Two shots only stacked in Registaxs and levelled and cropped in PS 50mm lens +2X teleconverter
2.Tail of Scorpio. 50 mm lens Various combinations of stacking methods and levelled and cropped in PS.
3. NGC253 and friends (NGC247 on the left and NGC288 below right). Widefield with 50mm Stacked in Registax and levelled and cropped in PS
4. Widefield Omega Cent. 50 mm and Levelled in PS (uncropped)
5. SMC and 47 TUC, Registax and Imagestacker. 50mm Levels and crop in PS
6. Coalsack and dark lanes. full wide field no cropping, best image for lack field curvature. 50mm Stacked in Registax levels in PS
7. 50mm + 2X teleconverter - Omega again (cropped)
Last edited by [1ponders]; 03-07-2005 at 04:12 PM.
They turned out great - guess that's what great transperancy (and great company ) can do! Glad to see your deliberations about 253 and 247 worked out - you really nailed it. Did you manage to snag any of the 10's of metors that streaked across the sky with their glowing green tails in any of your other shots?
The Andromeda shot worked out great too considering it was so low in the sky!
Not a meteor on any of the shots unfortunatley. Which is surprising considering how many and how bright they were, and how many shot I took during the night.
Thanks everyone, yes it is Geoff and just below Omega is ngc4945. While its not the best lense in the world it has certainly prompted me to try a few more. I was surprised how clearly some of the galaxies turned out. There's one I haven't posted that clearly shows M83 (though its very small), so here it is now, cropped from the original
Last edited by [1ponders]; 03-07-2005 at 07:12 PM.
Wow - fantastic images from what sounds like a great night out at Ron's. Well done for grabbing so many great shots and processing and posting so quickly.
Thanks again everyone. It was a bit of a rush job Mike. I might spend some time today going over them with a bit more care. My favs M31, simply because I've been wanting to get it for so long. You'll certainly be seeing more of it over the next few months as I try to get that perfect image
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Good one Paul!
