Aristarchus Plateau

[Zac Pujic]

Here is the Aristarchus Plateau including Schroeters valley. If you look in the Cobra's Head, you will see the smaller rille inside the valley.

31 cm f/28 Newtonian. 20 MAP position aligment with Registax 4beta.

http://astroimg.org/latestlunar.html

Zac Pujic
Brisbane, Australia
http://astroimg.org

[ving]

registax 4 beta is avaliable? cool! where and what can it do?

very nice image by the way :)

[sheeny]

Very nice image! Great detail!

:thumbsup:

Al.

[Zac Pujic]

The next release of Registax won't be for a while yet. I'm on the development team so I can use it currently. Its major feature is the automated multiple-alignment-point (MAP) function which enormously alleviates me of the tedium of doing MAP processing.

Zac Pujic
Brisbane, Australia
http://astroimg.org

[ving]

very cool, so hows the MAP function going? smooth?
I cant wait :)

[iceman]

Nice work Zac, and congratulations on winning the David Malin award for Solar system category. Much deserved.

[netwolf]

I just beeen over at your website and i am in awe of your work. Congrats on the award. Can you post some information on your equipment, telescope mount etc.

Regards

[matt]

Anyone in Australia seeling that introduction to webcam astrophotograhy book on your website homepage Zac?

[Zac Pujic]

Thank you. Yes the award was a bonus but I couldn't go down to Parkes to accept it.

The book by Robert Reeves was released a few weeks ago. He used about 20 of my images so I thought I'd help amateurs get wind of the book. I'm not sure if anyone locally will distribute it. It's quite a niche that the book is filling but is definately worth it. Robert goes into extraordinary detail in his description of techniques. Willman-Bell didn't want to publish in colour which detracts a little from the book since most planetary shots are fairly colourful.

My equipment is a 12 inch f/5.75 Newtonian with a mirror made (in the 1980s) by Mark Suchting. The tube is a fibreglass Parks tube and the mount is a Meade DS-16 german equatorial I bought in 1985 (I threw the tube away long ago and the 16 inch "mirror" is in a cupboard where it belongs - poor quality). I built a drive corrector from scratch which was pretty tough. It can accept autoguiding from a webcam but I rarely bother to do that since the tracking is adequate for planetary imaging. The mirror is badly in need of a new coating though.

My other telescope is a 20 inch which I also built, back in 1994 (some of you may have seen in had you been to Queensland Astrofest in the 90s). I'm currently modifying the optical tube assembly to fit on the DS-16. I'll keep you posted.

The best money I ever spent was on the ToUcam. At $150, it's provided me with months of dependability. Tonight, I tried my new SkyNyx 2.1 (monochrome). Its pretty expensive and has been shown to produce extraordinary images however it is finnicky. It's come late in the year to take any decent pics of the planets. I can't wait for the Moon to reappear in a few days.

Zac

[Zac Pujic]

I forgot to mention, the MAP function in the next registax is quite smooth. Even better is the ability to choose the size of the registration box which you place around a planet. Cor is in the final "cosmetics" stage of the development. We're trying to determine the best layout of the program. It's a little daunting since we all have ideas about how to lay things out, but we seem to reach consensus eventually.

I used to spend weeks doing MAP manually on the old registax. The new one is a dream.

Zac

[iceman]

ah, I was wondering when you'd take the next step. Guys like you and Maurice still using the ToUcam are producing magnificent stuff, and I can only imagine the next level you'll get to with more resolution, lower noise, and higher frame rates. I just bought the DMK - couldn't afford the SKyNYX this year :)

Do you have a motorised/manual filter wheel? I can't wait to see what you can produce with it.

I can't wait for the next version or registax. I can see a lot of people reprocessing old data on cloudy or bad seeing nights :) Does it have the ability to automate all of part of the process? One thing that bugs me is the constant need to click here, click there, when you go through the same routine almost all the time (especially creating reference frames). It would be great to be able to feed it in some parameters so it could go off on it's own, and be finished when you come back and not waiting for you to click "ok".

[matt]

Yep. A create reference frame option which you could select as automatic would be a nice touch:D

[Maurice]

Congrats from me too Zac! Well done on getting the Malin award!

I've attached a shot of the Aristarcus plateau that I took a couple of years ago. The difference in sun angle makes the area look quite different.

Cheers
Maurice

[netwolf]

Hi Zac,

Wow not bad for a DS-16 mount, i have the option to buy one at present but am optiing to go for Alt-Az motors instead. Its a great big heavy mount and its in the US so it would cost me song to get it over here. Also its not a very portable setup either. But its amazing what you have achived with it. From what you said it sounds like your still using the orignal drive that came with it.

Zac would love to see some Photos of your rig.

Regards

[Zac Pujic]

Thanks Maurice (and everyone else!). For a while I had problems shooting near the terminator as my secondary was badly in need of recoating (like the primary). I had much scattered light and couldn't get a black sky at the terminator. I opted for a replacement from the corroded 3.1 inch to a smaller 2.7 inch rather than realuminizing. I do occasionally shoot with higher sun angle but I'm interested in finding new lunar domes and in characterizing their slope, and this is best done at the terminator.

I refurbished my DS-16 mount since I had it for a long time. I get attached to things and couldn't bear to sell, discard or mothball it. I'm not using the original drive. I had to buy DC motors, make a pulse-width modulator to regulate speed, and learn how a parallel port works so that I could make it interface to a computer for webcam-based guiding. For the DEC I made a tangent arm assembly (since I didn't want to buy a worm-gear) so that makes it unsuitable for any GOTO abilities at the moment. For the RA, I initially used a unipolar stepper motor but found it resonated at sidereal rate (what a coincidence!) so replaced it with the same brand of DC motor used by Celestron.

The alt-az drives for dobs are really worth their money. I wouldn't recommend a DS-16 mount for anyone (they're discontinued anyway). But they do have a cult following.

I'll post some pics of my gear soon.

Zac