First Light - Sony A7s & the Horsehead

[SimmoW]

Best resolution here (https://www.flickr.com/photos/48232585@N00/16021889051/)

See my blog update for details, link down in my signature. I'm pleased with early testing of the camera.

[Andy01]

Looking good Simmo, very clean - Maybe boost the saturation a bit?
That FOV will be awesome on SMC/47 Tuc and Rho Ophiuchi regions.

[cometcatcher]

Simon, the amount of detail in even 1 minute for the horsehead is amazing! What a great camera!

[SimmoW]

Thanks Andy.

I've just signed up for Adobe Cloud, so here's a lightroom developed version, yeah I went crazy with a few settings. But wow, the editing has revealed a heap of dust and other details that can be extracted from the image.

[SimmoW]

more subtle version now, but still extracts more dust details

[ZeroID]

Holy Photons Batman !!

[dylan_odonnell]

Look at the clarity! Very nice. Amazing rig and great work too.

d

[Camelopardalis]

Wow, that's looking nice from only an hour of exposure :eyepop:

[raymo]

Oops!! wrong forum.
raymo

[mtfreestyler]

Glad to see it turned out so well. It's good to see the final product after our chat on sat/sun night.

Now I'm off to the classifieds to find my scope and mount

[LightningNZ]

That's crazy stuff. I notice you have a Takahashi E130 - that also needs to take a little credit as it's a superb instrument.

[SimmoW]

That's funny Raymo!

[SimmoW]

Great to meet you Matt, best of luck with the shopping, take your time remember, I know I did.

[dannat]

great work simon -i saw the little tak in the cnr of the imaging field at the star-b-q..sony has really pushed the envelope with the FF bodies, the latest having 5 axis IBS -nothing beats the a7s for low light though

[AstroJunk]

I'm liking this camera more and more. I have been a little worried by the monster pixel size given that I image at between 14mm and 700mm, and getting square stars, but your full size image shows only an inkling of squareness and even then that is only visible zoomed outrageously close in. Very nice.

I'm now and avid follower of your blog :)

[bwana]

Some great versions of the Horsehead and area!

It is indeed a great astro camera:

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-R4Gv2mItLeQ/VGrxRaZhExI/AAAAAAAAZ5Q/dIgYNNVX048/w1060-h668-no/IC434-IP-ExcAvg-DDP-3.jpg
40x20sec @ ISO 12800, full spectrum Sony A7S camera, HEUIB-II filter, Celestron 8" f/10 EdgeHD scope, Sky-Watcher EQ6Pro, unguided

This is my first post on this site. So if I'm doing something wrong, please let me know... How do you get the thumbnails you use?

bwa

[SimmoW]

welcome Brian, and thanks for posting your images, they helped me decide to get the A7s!

To load up pictures here, when posting you go down to 'manage attachments'. But the file size needs to be around 1 meg or it won't load.

BIG developments today! Al Sam kindly reprocessed my image with Startools, revealing the huge amt of data hidden in the file. So here is an updated version, so much dust revealed! And this is with just 2 min subs...

Flickr version here (https://www.flickr.com/photos/48232585@N00/15410089594/)

[raymo]

Looks great Simon. Images are limited to 200kb on IIS, although they
will load if a little larger. What sort of price range is this wonder camera in?
raymo

[SimmoW]

I paid 2600 including gst, modded, from JTW Astronomy, a pretty good price for a modded version

[raymo]

mmm!!! That's $2303 more than I paid new for my 1100D with 18-55mm. It might have to wait.
raymo

[bwana]

Really picked up portions of Barnard's Loop. Nice!

bwa

[bwana]

Speaking of which, I shot Barnard's Loop with a 105mm lens on the A7S a couple of nights ago:

Barnard's Loop Image (https://plus.google.com/photos/116260312230579398213/albums/5526546312185805697/6092876353572186610?pid=60928763535 72186610&oid=116260312230579398213)

Enjoy!

bwa

[mithrandir]

Hey Brian! Nice to see you here. The limit for inline images is 200KB, and that works out at around 1200 pixels for the long dimension if you want to keep the quality reasonable. I use RIOT with GIMP as it lets you say what size you want and fiddles the quality to get it. It also works with IrfanView. There must be something similar for PS.

There are "a few" more members on IIS than CAAP. :)

[bwana]

Thanks. Lightroom has much the same functionality...

bwa

[bwana]

My album of shots from last night w/ the Tokina 300mm lens and Sony A7S:

https://plus.google.com/photos/116260312230579398213/albums/6093623080982393841
A few overlaps with the Flame and Horsehead nebulas and other scattered targets, in particular the Pleiades star cluster.

The lens is definitely NOT as good as the Astro-Tech 65EDQ and has serious vignetting on a full frame sensor (but then again it is a crop sensor lens). In crop mode the lens has almost exactly the same field-of-view as the AT65EDQ (when used on a full frame sensor).

Enjoy!

bwa