barx1963
19-01-2017, 08:57 PM
A while back I managed to pick up a used SBIG STT8300M camera with filter wheel, internal guide camera and a set of Baader LRGBC and narrowband (Ha, OIII ans SII) filters.
I had purchased another CCD (Atik One 6.0) with LRGB filters bat was interested in setting up for narrowband so thought what the hell. Anyway, since then I have been learning to use the Atik with some success and decided I had better give the SBIG a try. As it has a 2.156" thread attachment or a 2" nosepiece, I needed an adapter to attach it to my existing field flattener on my Stellarvue scope which uses a standard M42 (T2 thread) but that would leave me with the way more backfocus than the flattener could handle. So i decided to order a field flattener from Stellarvue and Alex from SV made one up designed to match my camera to the SBIG camera. It arrived yesterday so I had first light last night. As I had only done basic testing on the camera, it took a couple of hours to get everything working, but once it was I was able to get a few frames of narrowband stuff on NGC3722 (Eta Carina nebula) overall I am very impressed. Stars are very round and the images look pretty darn good. Don't have enough to do a "proper" image, but in the meantime, here are some single subs in OIII (8nm), Ha (7nm) and SII (8.5nm). These are single subs, OIII and SII for 5mins, Ha for 2 mins through a Stellarvue SVR102T-IS refractor at 714mm, Orion Atlas AZ-EQ G mount, guiding with Orion SSAG Pro through an Orion ST80. Data acquisition in SGP. Anly processing is a bit of stretching in PS CC2017.
One thing I think I learnt last night is that Off Axis Guiding is not necessarily the best way to go. I was using it on the Atik and it was nice to just use a guidescope! My setup is pretty robust so flexure is not really an issue and the guide results were excellent, well under 0.8"RMS reported in PHDII over the entire session.
I had purchased another CCD (Atik One 6.0) with LRGB filters bat was interested in setting up for narrowband so thought what the hell. Anyway, since then I have been learning to use the Atik with some success and decided I had better give the SBIG a try. As it has a 2.156" thread attachment or a 2" nosepiece, I needed an adapter to attach it to my existing field flattener on my Stellarvue scope which uses a standard M42 (T2 thread) but that would leave me with the way more backfocus than the flattener could handle. So i decided to order a field flattener from Stellarvue and Alex from SV made one up designed to match my camera to the SBIG camera. It arrived yesterday so I had first light last night. As I had only done basic testing on the camera, it took a couple of hours to get everything working, but once it was I was able to get a few frames of narrowband stuff on NGC3722 (Eta Carina nebula) overall I am very impressed. Stars are very round and the images look pretty darn good. Don't have enough to do a "proper" image, but in the meantime, here are some single subs in OIII (8nm), Ha (7nm) and SII (8.5nm). These are single subs, OIII and SII for 5mins, Ha for 2 mins through a Stellarvue SVR102T-IS refractor at 714mm, Orion Atlas AZ-EQ G mount, guiding with Orion SSAG Pro through an Orion ST80. Data acquisition in SGP. Anly processing is a bit of stretching in PS CC2017.
One thing I think I learnt last night is that Off Axis Guiding is not necessarily the best way to go. I was using it on the Atik and it was nice to just use a guidescope! My setup is pretty robust so flexure is not really an issue and the guide results were excellent, well under 0.8"RMS reported in PHDII over the entire session.