Just next door

[topheart]

Hi,
Just next to M42 is a very interesting view containing quite a few "weird objects"
NGC1999
IC428
IC427
HH1
HH2
Waterfall Nebula

Taken from Savannah Skies, Australia which is situated in the dry savannah country about 3.5 hours drive west of Cairns in Far North QLD, only about 17 degrees south of the equator. Very remote dark skies exist in the middle of a vast cattle station with four observatory domes perched up on a hill with views of the scrub all around with no human infringements visible.
Telescope: Takahashi BRC 250. Mount: ParamountME. Camera: FLI PL16803 with FLI research grade filters. HaLRHaGB image acquired utilising CCDAutoPilot5 remotely. 10 minute subframes calibrated and stacked in CCDStack then processed in Photoshop and PixInsight.

Posting to see if your comments can help me improve.

Many thanks,
Tim:help:

[gregbradley]

Fabulous image Tim. Congrats on your new setup.

Greg.

[Atmos]

Fantastic image!
If I tilt my head 90 degrees anti-clockwise, I feel like the Cheshire Cat is watching me :P

[multiweb]

That's awesome. Your skies must be very dark. Great contrast on a faint target. :thumbsup:

[DJScotty]

Very nice indeed. :thumbsup:

[topheart]

Thankyou all!


Yes, the Savannah Skies site is a pleasure after struggling with the coastal humidity and cloud in Cairns.

Yes, I see a cat too!....The "Phantom Feline in Orion", I guess you could say.

Greg, congrats on your new scope also - unbeatable!!

Cheers,
Tim

[multiweb]

You said you image remotely. How did you guys sort out power for your observatories. Do you have main AC or run Genies? If the latter I assume you have someone on site to do the house keeping? That looks pretty remote. Beautiful spot.

[Stevec35]

Nicely done. This has always been a favourite area of the sky for me and your image of it is great.

Cheers

Steve

[Placidus]

Love HH1 and 2. Superb.

[topheart]

Thankyou!

Marc, We are many many kilometers away from any mains power - we have an off-grid solar plant with a 3000ah battery bank. We also have an autostart diesel generator that will kick in if the battery bank state of charge falls below our defined level, but we actually haven't had any need for the backup generator at all. There is just so much solar energy out at the site with cloudy days being very rare especially during the dry (imaging) season from March through to November. There is a farmhouse a few kilometers away with support on the ground if we need it. The internet is 3G, with satellite as a backup.

Cheers,
Tim:thanx:

[Rex]

Awesome image Tim, and a fantastic set up. I think I need to run SCNR on myself I am so green with envy. :D

[gregbradley]

Your internet connection, is it landline or mobile 3g? If its mobile is it reliable?

Greg.

[topheart]

Good on you Rex!

Greg,

It is mobile 3G coming off a tower 22km away....If you look at the panorama shot I attached a few replies back, you will see a yellow triangular 3G aerial (yagi) on a pole high up above the satellite dish. This gives us very reliable internet indeed....actually faster than I get at home on the crappy old copper wires in Cairns (ADSL). We have never had it go down......It seems as there is very little population out there, that the bandwidth available to us remains solid all the time. If the 3G was to go down though, as the signal is going straight into our network router, along with the satellite internet, the satellite internet kicks in automatically and you don't even notice a significant delay......The satellite internet is not quite as good for remote access as the distance the the signal has to travel up to the satellite and back down to Earth (76000 km) causes an inherent 550msec ping time. The satellite however, is cheaper and good for file transmission, so we do use it for that preferentially.

We enjoy going out there to do regular maintenance or to troubleshoot .....total peace and tranquility!!

Cheers,
Tim

[Peter Ward]

Very tidy indeed.

Love the remote set-up...looks very slick!

[Rod771]

I'll bet!

Great site, and an awesome image! :thumbsup:

[Paul Haese]

Nice to see your remote system Tim. Being a remote imager too, albeit a lot close to Adelaide than your present location to Cairns, I can appreciate all the nuances to redundancy and the level of complexity you have in your system. Very tidy looking setup.

Nice image of a rarely imaged object.

[topheart]

Thanks very much indeed Peter, Paul, and Rod.
Best wishes to all,Tim

[alpal]

Nice setup Tim with premium optics & other high end equipment.
It's such an interesting picture that I'd like to see the full size
& also just a Ha version.


cheers
Allan

[multiweb]

Yeah I noticed the banks of solar panels. Great gear too, under ideal conditions in a pristine location. Win-win scenario. :thumbsup:

[SimmoW]

What a superb image! Lovely tools too

[Camelopardalis]

Both subject and site look fantastic :thumbsup:

[topheart]

Thanks Simon, Dunk, and Allan.
Allan,

I will sort out a link to a high res and Ha soon and post it here.
Cheers,
Tim

[dvj]

Wow, that's superb!

[jase]

Good to see an image from you Tim. Judging from your web site updates, one could conclude you're not imaging anymore. I'm pleased this is not the case. Fantastic image of this area. Would be good to see a high res image in order to suggest any improvements (if any). Don't be shy mate, keep on posting here.

I hope your 20" keller is happier under those pristine dark skies too. I'd imagine the seeing would have improved compared thick as pea soup humidity of cairns.

[strongmanmike]

Greeeat setup there Tim :eyepop:...looks like heaven, what's the wet season like? Great image too :thumbsup:

Mike

[SpaceNoob]

Great image, there's a lot going on in this one. As Allan has said, Ha view would be very interesting. Keep em coming!

[topheart]

Hi Jase,

Thanks very much. Yes, I have been very busy on all fronts in the last few years, but I have now setup and organised all the facilities at "Savannah Skies" and I have been gathering huge amounts of data in the last 18 months or so from out there, which I have only lately had time to organise and process to some degree. We have also been doing a lot of scientific work - occultations of Pluto and Sedna for MIT/Princeton Uni etc and a lot of supernova work.

I will soon tag a Savannah Skies website page to the astrophoto.com.au site. The poor old "Jewel Box Observatory" hasn't seen much use with terrible weather throughout the years in Cairns lately. I do have plans to truck it and re-establish it next to the 4 domes at Savannah Skies.

The Keller 20 inch sits very proudly now on a bent equatorial pier on a ASA DDM85Premium mount in one of the 3.5m domes at Savannah Skies. It is very happy indeed! FWHM's at SS very good.

A full res tif file can be downloaded here ( very big file though):
https://www.sendspace.com/file/4bntwa
It is a HaLHaRGB image even though it is mislabelled LRGB.

The raw mean Ha file is here with nil processing applied: (also a big file)
https://www.sendspace.com/file/6ud1v2

Thanks,
Tim

[topheart]

Thanks Mike!

The wet season - Ahhh! A chance to process data!

It is generally wet.....but not that wet out at Savannah Skies, but often cloudy between December and March....hot ....39deg in the day in this period....also fairly frequent, but spectacular lightning storms.....we have designed to dome compound to be a "Faraday cage" and have fibre -optic network cable routed under ground between the domes to try and reduce the lightning risks.

Cheers,
Tim

[topheart]

Thanks Chris.....OK , I do have a bunch of images processed recently....Will soon post to learn from you all. :thanx:
Cheers,
Tim

[alpal]

Hi Tim,
Thanks for those links,
the images stand up well at full res.

cheers
Allan

[topheart]

Thanks Allan!

[RickS]

Very cool, Tim!

[topheart]

Thanks Rick!

Cheers,
Tim