Holly smoke, look what comes out of big brown boxes!!!!!!!!!

[Bassnut]

Hi All
Just received the Ultimate Astro Toy (Jase, you really should get one :whistle: )

Thanks to Peter Ward of ATS for a speedy, hassle free delivery..

Imaging at F20 on a 12" LX2000R OTA?, bah, a doddle with 1 arc sec PE (I hope, with PEC), stay tuned.

Im seriously broke dudes, as you would expect!!.

Cheers

[ballaratdragons]

Yuk Fred. What's that horrible Red thing on your bench? :whistle:

That is too heavy for you to lift, send it to me and I will save your back ;)

[davidpretorius]

Fred, those and the max mounts are to die for!


WOW

[h0ughy]

:eyepop: did you say you were using it with a 66mm scope????:whistle:

crying, sob, sputter - you did say you were going to donate it to the Hough institute;) for mentally deranged astronomers:D

[[1ponders]]

Now THAT'S a smile. :face:

or is it more of a smirk with a twisted grin :D


Maybe if I an sell my family :confuse3:

[h0ughy]

well????:lol:

What a lovely flower pot stand:thumbsup:

[[1ponders]]

I'm still thinking..........Josh has been pushing his luck lately :confuse3:


Besides h0ughy I couldn't do it to you. Can you imagine what your reaction would be if I turned up at Astrofest with one of those :lol: :evil:

[Astroman]

WOW what a smile, oh the mount looks pretty good too.

[ballaratdragons]

Can you imagine Houghys wifes reaction if HE turned up with one, as he splurts out:

"Yes dear, it was only $49.95" :D

[[1ponders]]

:rofl:

[jase]

You are da man Fred!!! :bowdown:


Well done on such a fine purchase. Its on my purchase list, just not yet - maybe early next year. Besides, it would look pretty stupid with a 7kg FSQ sitting on top.:lol:

Talking about OTA's... what are you doing with that LX200R. Think its time to sell and get yourself a real RC. I will go halves in the OTA with you, providing I get some robotic telescope time allocated.:D

Look forward to seeing some PE stats. You're the next Richard Crisp (http://www.narrowbandimaging.com/New_Images_page.htm) with your narrow field, narrowband imaging...;)

Once again, great purchase:thumbsup:

[GTB_an_Owl]

how much RAIN comes with that thing ??????

geoff

[[1ponders]]

:rofl: @GTB_an_Owl

[Kal]

With those two serial ports and the parallel port(?) at the front of it it almost looks like a robot with a face :lol:

envy :party:

[seeker372011]

thats a mount now

[[1ponders]]

For the sake of everyones sanity and purse (especially mine) and marital bliss, I think we should lock this thread, throw away the key and bury it deeeeeeep into the archives.:prey:

[Bassnut]

Thanks you Guys

It only comes in Red, I ordered Green, bah, what do you do, send it back!. Max mount?, dunno, an early adopter (Dr Clay) sent it back, what does that say?,.. HOUGHY , wha??? 66mm, thats WW (Wide feild Wooze) terittory, none of that dirty talk round here thank you hehe. Smirk?, you bet, die in green ENVY, plebs ;-).

Jase, OK, a "real RC", nah, the LX200R is a (semi) real RC, I know, I paid for it. Given shiet seeing, bad guiding (NOT ANY MORE HAH, HAH), average focus, I bet you coulnnt tell the diff. Given my financial situation Ill prove it or be dambed ;-).

Rain?, shiet loads, thats how much, your buried in H2O (and me)for the next 2 mths at least :-,

It IS a robot with a face ;-). The thru-the-mount wiring is sooo cool (incl USB, who needs Parellell ports these days, get real, hehe).

Cheers

OK dudes I have no excuses now, awesome narrow field pics on the way

[jase]

Semi is the word Fred, not real. A more polite way of putting it is an aplanatic SCT.

Sounds like your goal is to get into the high resolution work. Obviously, the mount is not the issue now. ;) Not sure what you're going to do about the seeing though. Where's that AO unit:D. What's your current arcsec/pix combination?

[Ric]

Awesome piece of equipment Fred, I hope you still have a few body parts left after that purchase. :lol:

Now we know the reason for all that rain last week.

I'm looking forward to seeing the images it produces, they should be something special.

Cheers

[Bassnut]

Hi Ric, Jase

Spent an arm and a leg, least got an arm left to mouse click, and dude, now, thats all it takes hehe.

Jase
Just kidding, the LXR is no RC, learnt that, hurts there ;-), What do you expect for the money?, I knew that before I purchased, im still happy despite the hype.

The A07 is still a painfull experiece untill, maybe (no, I will), I get an instrument rotator.

Meantime, ill spend more time with PS and cheat a little.

Right now my arc sec/pixel is 0.98 and set to get worse (-:. But despite a whole gamit of reasons not to, Ill give it a shot. Other factors mitigate the problem, I just fancy "different" pics. Difficult, unusual images often please more than just technical quality.

Cheers

[iceman]

Wow Fred, that's a serious looking mount. Congrats. If your images don't improve 3 fold, I'd send it back :)

[OneOfOne]

And I am sure he can use it to track the Sun to get maximum growth!

[Garyh]

Oh boy, now it will rain for a year!!!!
Seriously thats some nice piece of gear!!!!
Do you have a link to the specs Fred?
Give me something else to drool over!!!!
cheers

[[1ponders]]

Here you go Gary. Don't say you haven't been warned. ;)
http://www.bisque.com/help/paramountme/Paramount_ME.htm

How did I find it so quick? I have it bookmarked and visit it every few days. :lol:

[jase]

Technically, once you rework the PEC using Bisque's PrecisePEC sw, you should be able to get down to a peak-to-peak of ~.8 arcsecs. I've read from a few sources that out of the box they operate at around 3.5-4 arcsecs. Under their stated >5 arcsecs. I've got the Titan tuned to 2.6 arcsecs, but I think I could get it a little lower unless I'm up against manufacturing errors. Will never reach the 1.5 or lower though.

The only thing thats against you now is seeing. I think you should reconsider an AO if you're serious about high resolution narrowfield work. You could investigate using a Dichroic Beam Splitter which would address your AO concerns. As they split the on axis light to two imaging cameras, you wont have problems finding guide stars etc. They work well with NB filters as the DBS is located before the filter/camera. One light path goes to the imaging camera, the other to the AO/Guider so you get the best of both worlds - none of this off axis or separate guide scope stuff. There are a few manufactures - RCOS is one of them. I think their prices start at US$3k for the unit. Requires 3.25" of back focus which wouldn't be an issue for you. Alternatively, if you didn't want to use one light path to guide, you could do narrowband (ha,SII,OIII) and broadband (R,G,B,) with two cameras simultaneously - now that is cool - or better still go with your narrowband and have the other camera do some NIR work with those Astrodon NIR filters. Nothing like capturing data, that the typical Joe can't access with his gear. ;) You wanted unusual images - NIR and NIR hybrids (mixing with narrowband) is getting up there. Perhaps you could turn that ST8 of yours into the guider and get yourself a large NABG imaging chip. This would allow you to resample your images. In many ways I wish I had not gone the ABG path with the STL11k. Would have much preferred the sensitivity. The STL11k is a fun/beginners chip for those who don't want to deal with blooms and the like.

I'll shut up now and stop trying to persuade you to spend more money. Hey, what are you still doing standing beside the ME with that cheezy grin on your face... haven't you got work to do - why isn't it mounted on the pier yet. Geezzz I don't know. ...What! you're not going to smash a champagne bottle over it and give it a funky name. Whats wrong with you Fred.;):P

[Aussie Pete]

Congrats Freddo!

Its about time you got serious my friend :) Now where shall we put GRAS-014 huh? We need to speak to the Brad-man methinks mate!

BTW i have a Tak Sky90 about to gather dust, but your no woose. Best of skies to you 'partner'!?

Aussie Pete

[Bassnut]

Jase

Well, youve bought up some salient points there I must say.

SBIG now have a new A0 with which the guide image path goes round the filter wheel, avoiding it, looks good. Im not totally put off by the A07, ill just wait till is all set up to use easily (click on a star in Skys FOV indicator, and thats it, plate solve, rotate , all that fancy stuff automatically ;-).

I dont see many ppl use splitters, wouldnt that halve the brightness?, that would double exposure times?, bit like having your cams QE halved, eek.

NIR filters sound very interesting, ive often thought of doing that, but the few pics of seen, an NIR mix didnt seem to make a striking difference, although it would allow creative processing perhaps to show detail in unusual ways.

Sheesh, Ive never heard of somone complaining they wish they had started >smaller< than an ST11k !!, seems to be an inevitable top of the guru upgrade path ;-).

Although I sometimes wish I had a large chip (or ABG), I did go the ST8 precisely for its hi QE. I would have liked the ST10XME but couldnt affort it at the time, I think its the highest QE SBIG make. For me, its the dream machine (well, apart from FLI, thinned, back illuminated -400 deg cooling etc natch). I didnt know it at the time, but I ended up kinda liking narrowfeild/narrowband so the NABG ST8 worked out well.

The requirements for 35mm format bother me, big flat image circle, big focuser, big fliters, everything is in a different class. The low QE aint flash. Despite all this, the gurus all want it for a reason hehe, sure gets fantastically detailed images !! (as you have shown too Jase). My close up, dodgy, overprocessed, crayon drawings cant match the detail you get hehe.

Re mounting mount. Yeah, sure buddy ;-), I have to cut the pier down so the roof can close with the scope in any orientation (its automated), I havent even worked out how to do that yet, eeek. And itll be raining for the next 2.57 yrs !.

Cheers
Fred

[jase]

You're right, there are not many people using a Dichroic Beam Splitters only because its relatively new to the amateur. The pros have had beam splitters for some time. Custom Scientific make three dichroic mirrors that are used in the RCOS beam splitter that have varying levels of brightness/transmission - The DC675SP and DC675AR aren't the best, but the 700AR has literally no light loss as can be seen in the graphs. Very impressive. Exposure times are the same with the 700AR. Think about it - how cool would it be to capture R,G,B and SII,HA,OIII simultaneously on a single object! Of course this is an extreme case, I think a more suitable application is the use of an AO unit with a DBS. Instrument rotaters are good, in fact if your self-guiding with an internal guide chip it makes finding a guide star much easier. I use the Tak CAA on the FSQED quite a bit for this, but more so to frame the object in an aesthetic manner.

I'm not complaining about chip size, just sensitivity. The new large format Kodak chips like the KAF9000 and KAF16803 address the sensitivity. I just think the KAI-11000 isn't ideal. I believe the KAF9000 is twice as sensitive as the KAI-11000 around the 656.3 wavelength. For narrowband work, sensitivity has a major benefit. ~90% of telescopes on the market today stuggle to illuminate a full 35mm frame so in a lot of ways the benefits of a large chip are wasted. Manufacturers are starting to build scopes from focal plane forward, but generally this comes at an expense such as 4" focusers etc that the average amateur can't afford. The KAF9000 for example requires an image circle of 52mm in diameter. I could count the scopes on one hand that could successfully illuminate the entire frame - not many thats for sure. As you also mention, filters start becoming very expensive. The filters for the KAF9000 and KAF16803 should be square to avoid vignetting in the corners, so this means a new filter wheel to accommodate the filters. You can pick up a set of the Astrodon 50mm square filters (LRGBHa) for US$1,900. Big chip imaging isn't for everyone, but if you've got a scope that can handle it, its worth the effort and money.

Re: your pier - nothing an angle grinder cant fix mate. Or you could simply park the scope on a 90 degree angle so the roof can close (instead of counter weight down - the norm).

[ving]

i have hear they are only good for 5kg...

[jase]

:lol: Add another 63kg Ving...

The Paramount ME has a 68kg (150 pound) photographic instrument payload capacity. Having stated this it will do more. It will carry a RCOS 20" Truss RC that weighs right on 150 pounds. Add guidescopes, cameras etc and you'll find it will handle around 75-80kg. I read one guy had his loaded to 90kg with three scopes hanging off it - still tracked with arcsec precision (just well balanced). Will certainly handle Fred's 12" LX200R that comes in at 16.3kg (36 pounds).

[Bassnut]

Hi Jase, I must say, I dont understand the graphs, surely a splitter steers half the photons one way and half the other, what does the 90% + transmission mean (other than total loss)?. It cant allow 2 sensors the same total exposure time?.

[jase]

Yeah, you're right. Perhaps I should have explained what the Dichroic Beam Splitter does in the first place! The filter passes through visual wavelengths to the imaging camera and reflects wavelengths 700nm (for the 700AR filter) and higher to the guider. As stars emitted across such broad wavelengths, this allows you to find a guide star with ease. This leads me to the reason why I mentioned getting into NIR imaging as you could replace the guider with another imager that has NIR filters. Thus do NIR and SII,Ha and OIII simultaneously. Exposure lengths would be different based on filter and camera QE - so I over exaggerated that part, but this really wouldn't make a big difference as the two cameras would be controlled independantly.

So the 90%+ transmission is the visual wavelengths the filter passes through.

Here are a few interesting links that may give you more of an insight.
http://www.rcopticalsystems.com/dbs.html
http://www.buytelescopes.com/container.asp?dest=/manufacturers/rc_optical_systems/splitter.htm
http://www.zemax.com/kb/articles/132/1/How-To-Model-a-Dichroic-Beam-Splitter/Page1.html

Its simply food for thought in your quest for high resolution narrowfield work.

[Bassnut]

Hi Jase

Food for thought, wow, sure is :eyepop:

I had no idea they worked like that, I thought they just passed half the signal and refected the rest. I followed the links, very educational, thank you for that. The set up useing the A07 is brilliant, it makes sense the star signal is broadband so doesnt need the visual frequencies to guide on.And of cause it allows imaging in IR simultaneously as an alternative.

Again, a real eye opener, excellent info Jase, much appreciated.

Cheers