Sticking with the program

[multiweb (Marc)]

Had a ball last night despite the moon and made an all nighter, bed at 5:00am. Yay! Tested my new SMC Pentax-M 150mm F3:5 lens. Got plenty of data on the cone nebula. Huge field (7x5 degrees). When it went down I moved to Eta and got a few panels around it towards the southern cross.

Very busy field (including death ray from the blazing moon). Rejected as much as I could by offsetting but it was fierce. Looks kind of cool actually like lighting the stage.

Things todo: sort out the horrendous focal plane tilt I got. I must have done something terribly wrong when attaching the lens as the bottom left stars look like drops but given the scarce opportunities to image I couldn't care less and still went on. Plenty of rainy days coming for shimming.

At that image scale and resolution I can live with it and it still makes for a pretty view the idea being to highlight all the well known objects between Carina and Crux.

Big one here and I have a nice plate solve here too.
Thanks for looking.

[Octane (Humayun)]

That's Lovejoy making a reappearance!

Looks great, Marc. Look forward to more.

H

[Peter Ward]

Luftwaffe making a bombing run?? Just kidding

Like it.

[Nico13 (Ken)]

Nice, what have you got behind the Pentax lens, is it the QHY5?
The old Pentax glass is good stuff and worth working with.

[multiweb (Marc)]

Originally Posted by Octane

That's Lovejoy making a reappearance!

Looks great, Marc. Look forward to more.

H

Thanks H. Hehe... Yeah that'd be right. All my comet shots looked like that. All tail no head.

Originally Posted by Peter Ward

Luftwaffe making a bombing run?? Just kidding

Like it.

Thanks Peter. Yup. I can even hear the sirens.

Originally Posted by Nico13

Nice, what have you got behind the Pentax lens, is it the QHY5?
The old Pentax glass is good stuff and worth working with.

Thanks Ken. No it's a QHY9, so mono. True. I have a fair bit of old M prime Pentax lenses now. They're very good and quite affordable on eBay.

[SkyViking (Rolf)]

Very nice view, it's certainly a busy area!

[cventer]

Nice Work.

Such an awesome area. We are lucky to have this in Southern Hemisphere for sure.

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Eta, Eta where for art thou Eta..?

Lot of stuff in there Marc, a good nights work from moony, light polluted Sydney

You even have the head and left wing of the running chicken lower left

Mike

[avandonk]

Looks good Marc. I would make an extended lens hood that only allows the lens to see the bit of sky it is actually imaging. This will enhance contrast as this extraneous light just gets scattered inside the lens and some inevitably falls on the sensor. If you have a look at the top movie cameras they all have extended rectangular lens hoods for this reason. They are also well baffled just as we sometimes are.

Bert

[gregbradley]

Very nice Marc. Len imaging is lots of fun.

Greg.

[Rigel003 (Graeme)]

Humungous field of view, Marc. You'll have a lot of fun with that combo. Gotta love NGC 3532 being labelled as the "Firefly Party Cluster" in the plate solve. Only the Americans could come up with that one.

[multiweb (Marc)]

Originally Posted by SkyViking

Very nice view, it's certainly a busy area!

Thanks Rolf. Yeah plenty to go around in this area, and at any FL.

Originally Posted by cventer

Nice Work.

Such an awesome area. We are lucky to have this in Southern Hemisphere for sure.

Thanks mate. Yes it is an awesome part of the sky. Coming from the NE I can relate and say we've got it all down under. Dark skies and all the goodies.

Originally Posted by strongmanmike

Eta, Eta where for art thou Eta..?

Lot of stuff in there Marc, a good nights work from moony, light polluted Sydney

You even have the head and left wing of the running chicken lower left

Mike

Thanks Mike. Very happy with just the fact of getting out and getting some. i have my fix now and it should las me for a couple of weeks. Will revisit the chicken. Shame it's a bit offset and I'd have to go down a bit. May be with the 100mm. I have a 120mm coming soon and that would be spot on for it.

Originally Posted by avandonk

Looks good Marc. I would make an extended lens hood that only allows the lens to see the bit of sky it is actually imaging. This will enhance contrast as this extraneous light just gets scattered inside the lens and some inevitably falls on the sensor. If you have a look at the top movie cameras they all have extended rectangular lens hoods for this reason. They are also well baffled just as we sometimes are.

Bert

Thanks Bert. The lens has a built-in alu hood and I suspect the moon (on the meridian at the time) picked up the shinny edge because offsetting the whole field even by 3 degrees didn't change anything. In hindsight I should have stuck an A4 sheet of anything against the camera just for that frame.

Originally Posted by gregbradley

Very nice Marc. Len imaging is lots of fun.

Greg.

Thanks Greg. Yes it is easy and just point and shoot which is all you can really do with that weather.

Originally Posted by Rigel003

Humungous field of view, Marc. You'll have a lot of fun with that combo. Gotta love NGC 3532 being labelled as the "Firefly Party Cluster" in the plate solve. Only the Americans could come up with that one.

Thanks Graeme. Yeah I noticed that too. It took me ages to plate solve it and the cluster name was the only hint that worked to roughly locate the field in the program I used. Never heard it before either.

[Ross G]

Hi Marc,

I had a feeling you would be out imaging all night on Friday.

Great looking photo.

The 150mm focal length gives a nice FOV.

You must nearly have the whole set of Pentax lenses.

With all your cameras you could construct an array and do simultaneous, multi focal length shots of objects.

Thanks.

Ross.

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Yeh I agree with Ross, good idea Marc, try it I recon, what a project.

Mike

[multiweb (Marc)]

Originally Posted by Ross G

Hi Marc,

I had a feeling you would be out imaging all night on Friday.

Great looking photo.

The 150mm focal length gives a nice FOV.

You must nearly have the whole set of Pentax lenses.

With all your cameras you could construct an array and do simultaneous, multi focal length shots of objects.

Thanks.

Ross.

Originally Posted by strongmanmike

Yeh I agree with Ross, good idea Marc, try it I recon, what a project.

Mike

Thanks Ross. I'd need a camera at each end though and a couple of other laptops. That wouldn't go too well with SWMBO.