Trapezium with planetary camera

[bird]

Last night I tried to use my planetary camera for deep sky imaging, I picked the easiest target, the trapezium and surronding nebulosity. I figured I should make my first deep sky image as easy as possible :-)

No filters, and the slowest video mode I could set - one frame per second.

Prime focus, f/5.5 and focal length 1800mm.

This is a stack of 500 frames, with some dark drame subtraction etc, but there's clearly some artifacts still present. Not too bad considering the camera is not cooled.

Scope: http://www.acquerra.com.au/astro/lexx.html (no powermate)

Capture details: 640x480 16bpp, 1 fps for 500 seconds.

dark frames subtracted.

cheers, Bird

[ving]

where is it? :shrug:

[bird]

damn that was fast...

[ving]

sorry, i was too fast :lol:
I get excited about your phtots :P

got a stack of stars in and around teh trap there. nice shot :)

[xstream]

Not to shabby at all, Anthony. :thumbsup:

[ballaratdragons]

Welcome to Deep Space, Bird. :thumbsup:

Lots and lots and lots of targets when you are finished with Planets :lol:

Good Trap shot :)
If you want to get rid of the Black-eyes around the stars, run the finished pic through 'Loreal' :thumbsup:

[bird]

Thanks Ken, lots of new software to try out...

Bird

[bird]

Here we go Ken, is this better?

[ballaratdragons]

Getting there Bird. It looks better. Whichever program you used seems to have left a blur next to the stars that have had the Black-eyes removed.

Here's your pic after being run through Loreal (I hope you don't mind)

[acropolite]

Nicely captured Bird. Now we expect some coloured filters.....then again this could be an expensive change in direction. :confuse3:

[ballaratdragons]

Colour!!!! Geez Phil, with Birds talent he will exceed the colour Orion Neb pics we have grown to love in here! :thumbsup:

More the merrier! :)

[davidpretorius]

i have now seen it all.....this is all very sad......

see weather gods, this is what bad seeing can do to great planet imagers.........yes that is right...drive him to....i can't say it.....yes ..... it is very difficult to mouth that dirty word.........DSO

there i said it!!

next those weather gods will drive him to look through an eyepiece .............dear god no!

[ballaratdragons]

Too late Davo,

As far as DSO's and looking thru the eyepiece, Bird had a good look at the Fornax Cluster thru my 12" at Camp! :D

[bird]

Ken, I used loreal, as you suggested :-) But probably not had as much practice at it as I need :-)

cheers, Bird

[ballaratdragons]

Ahhhhh, yeah, I made a mess of some stars when I first used Loreal.

Once I worked out the settings (all in French :mad2: ) it became easy to use.
It is a great tool for those horrid Black-eye artifacts :thumbsup:

I am looking forward to more DSO's from you :)

[iceman]

Nicely done Anthony! You should take some shorter exposures to reveal the trap stars better without overexposing them, and use layer masking in photoshop to merge the layers together.

Nice work!

[bird]

I thought about doing that, but it sounded too much like serious work, not something for a spur of the moment shot :-)

maybe next time...

Bird

[avandonk]

I would like to see the trap at the same conditions you use for planets. Should seperate all the component stars with ease.

Bert

[bird]

Sure does, I've looked at it but it would be hard to see any nebulosity. If I was just after the stars then I can *just* fit the trapezium into the FOV with the 5x powermate in there as well...

cheers, Bird

[iceman]

At 10m focal length you'd be able to drive a truck (or a convoy of trucks) through the components :)