Images from the SE-Qld Icinspacers night

[[1ponders]]

I won't go into the details here but needless to say we had a fantastic night. I spent most of the night trying out my new 50mm lens and hopping between Astro_souths 12.5" Dob and Astroron's 16" Dob. More of them elsewhere.

How did my new lens go. .....mmmmm....soso. For a cheap achro lens I suppose its not too bad. Terrible field curvature near the edges even stopped down a stop. May be better stopped down two stops. Fairly obvious chromatic aberation. Cheap and probably a good starters lens.

Anyway....lots of wide field shots taken Under excellent transparency, seeing only mediocre at around 3-4 out of ten. Wind was gusting quite a bit towards the end

. All at ISO400 at 240 sec. Anywhere from 3 to 8 shots per final image. Generally played with the stacking method using Registax, Imagestacker and PS. Most dark subtracted. Levels and cropping only in PS.

1. My first ever spotting of Andromeda Galaxy. Two shots only stacked in Registaxs and levelled and cropped in PS 50mm lens +2X teleconverter

2.Tail of Scorpio. 50 mm lens Various combinations of stacking methods and levelled and cropped in PS.

3. NGC253 and friends (NGC247 on the left and NGC288 below right). Widefield with 50mm Stacked in Registax and levelled and cropped in PS

4. Widefield Omega Cent. 50 mm and Levelled in PS (uncropped)

5. SMC and 47 TUC, Registax and Imagestacker. 50mm Levels and crop in PS

6. Coalsack and dark lanes. full wide field no cropping, best image for lack field curvature. 50mm Stacked in Registax levels in PS

7. 50mm + 2X teleconverter - Omega again (cropped)

[asimov]

What can I say?......fantastic!! My fav. being the andromeda shot. :thumbsup: Good one Paul!

[[1ponders]]

I was rather wrapped to get that John. I'd not even seen it before. 4:00 in the morning and with only about 2 shots left in the battery :cool:

[atalas]

Nice work Paul !


Louie

[ving]

lovely shots... lil' friend of m31 is there too :)

[beren]

Top work Paul , like the SMC/Tuc47 image the best :D :thumbsup:

[seeker372011]

love your work

[astro_south]

They turned out great - guess that's what great transperancy (and great company :D) can do! Glad to see your deliberations about 253 and 247 worked out - you really nailed it. Did you manage to snag any of the 10's of metors that streaked across the sky with their glowing green tails in any of your other shots?

The Andromeda shot worked out great too considering it was so low in the sky!

[[1ponders]]

Not a meteor on any of the shots unfortunatley. Which is surprising considering how many and how bright they were, and how many shot I took during the night.

[Starkler]

great stuff Paul :thumbsup:

Is that the hamburger I see above right of omega cen ?

[[1ponders]]

Thanks everyone, yes it is Geoff and just below Omega is ngc4945. While its not the best lense in the world it has certainly prompted me to try a few more. I was surprised how clearly some of the galaxies turned out. There's one I haven't posted that clearly shows M83 (though its very small), so here it is now, cropped from the original

[toetoe]

Fantastic Paul, your shots are a joy to look at. :thumbsup:

[Dennis]

Wow - fantastic images from what sounds like a great night out at Ron's. Well done for grabbing so many great shots and processing and posting so quickly.

Cheers

Dennis

[Mick]

Wonderful images Paul, the NGC 253 image is amazing, I have had some lovely views of it from dark sites thanks.

[Striker]

Love your work Paul....keep it up so you can teach me.

[gbeal]

Nice shots Paul, maybe time to plump some money for the "L" series lenses. Refreshing to try some piggyback every now and then though huh?

[iceman]

wow :thumbsup: Great shots Paul, you must've been busy to be up till 4:30am and still have time to process all these and post them the next day.

I love widefield shots! I see what you mean about the CA, but otherwise they are fantastic, lots of faint fuzzies in the NGC253 shot.

[h0ughy]

:bowdown: :bowdown: :bowdown: :bowdown: :bowdown: wow, absolutely fantastic shots Paul!! :2thumbs:

[Orion]

:2thumbs: It's all been said Paul, very well done

[[1ponders]]

Thanks again everyone. It was a bit of a rush job Mike. I might spend some time today going over them with a bit more care. My favs M31, simply because I've been wanting to get it for so long. You'll certainly be seeing more of it over the next few months as I try to get that perfect image :lol:

[Robby]

Great stuff Paul. we never see Andromeda down here, so nice one.
Did you autoguide any of those shots?

[[1ponders]]

They were all autoguided Robby, love that K3ccdtools :D. Bit of a challenge though. Everything was jumping around all over the place from the bad seeing. If you thinking about the stretched stars at the edge of some of the shot, its from the lens unfortunagely. I'm going to stop it down a couple more stops next time.

[dhumpie]

Very very nice widefield shots Paul. Pity I could not be there to join in the fun. Will you be going over to Mark's place this weekend if the weather is good? I think Andrew is trying to organize something seeing that the moon is still pretty new...

Darren

[acropolite]

Excellent shots Paul, I like the Andromeda one best. Do you think the field curvature and CA are caused by the lens or the Teleconverter.

[[1ponders]]

No Darren. As much as I'd like to, if I'm going to the Astrofest for 3 nights in August I need to bank up family time. :)

Phil its definately in the lens but there is probably some in the teleconverter as well though the shots I took with the converter on didn't seem to be as bad as without. Figure that one out :P

[trufflehunter]

Fantastic stuff, Paul! Can you give us a few more details about how you took them? Was the camera piggy-backed on your scope, etc etc...

[[1ponders]]

Yes Wayne, all piggyback 300D. 50mm lens @f/2.5 (will try slower f/ratio next time to try to limit field curvature). Some of the shots were also taken with a 2X Kenko Teleplus converter. The piggyback bracket wasn't the standard one that comes with most refractor mounting rings. I used a manfrotto miniball head, which allowed me to select the most suitable star to guide on with the scope and then swivel the camera to any angle and direction I want. That head is one purchase I couln't do without now. It make life so much easier. Piggybacked on my Celestron hd-102EQ refractor mounted on Losmandy GM-8. Drift aligned and autoguided using K3CCDTools V3 and focused using DSLR Focus.

I doubt that I would be able to get these shots and be happy with them without either of these programs. Like many people I have astigmatism so I have difficulty getting an accurate focus without wearing glasses. Which is frustrating to say the least when focusing stars. When focusing using DSLR its a slow process through a piggybacked camera, as its designed to be used by focusing your scope with the camera in Prime Focus or EEP and use your telescope focus knobs. But I wouldn't even attempt it (piggyback) now without using DSLR Focus after comparing my previous results. When using with just the camera lens I need to put a bit of blu-tac on the focus ring and stick it to the rest of the lens body. This alows me to get smaller movements in the focus ring without overshooting and adds a bit if stiffness/firmness to the mechanism.

Again I'd like to thank Robby for showing me how to drift align and autoguide with K3, and for the StarMate system. Its a sweet combination and makes life a hell of a lot easier. Also used the Starmate for automated exposure control and capture and mount control when not autoguiding.

As mentioned at the start, all at ISO400 at 240 sec. Anywhere from 3 to 8 shots per final image. Generally played with the stacking method using Registax, Imagestacker and PS depending on how I felt at the time and which program would do the job I wanted. I somethimes even used multiple programs. eg, stack in registax, use same images and stack in Imagestacker. Do a few adjustments in PS (levels mainly) on the final images and then re-run them through either Registax or Imagestacker again along with the originals. Most dark subtracted. Levels and cropping only in PS. No other post processing. Generally just played around with them to see what worked best. I'm still very much at the experiemental stage atm.

Hope that's helped Wayne :thumbsup:

[trufflehunter]

Thanks Paul! All is now clear! The Manfrotto miniball is something I might have to look into, I was thinking of something like that (adjustable) instead of, or in combination with, the Meade piggy-back bracket (sooo not adjustable!).

Which of the three apps you mentioned do you find 'better' for stacking?

Again, fantastic stuff! keep 'em coming! :2thumbs:

[[1ponders]]

The thing I like about the miniball is that it will screw straight onto the piggyback screw that comes with the standard piggyback brackets.

Depends on what sort of images I have, the brighness of them and their quality. I don't use PS much unless they are fairly good images to start with. Registax is the images are a bit iffy but are bright to start with and Imagestaker if they are a bit low in brightness or I want to average them (eg darks)