Omega the Great

[strongmanmike]

This is an old image from earlier last year (in fact the first taken with the new ProLine CCD camera and 6" Starfire back in May 07) but I've now increased the brightness of the core and stretched the outer regions to reveal a few more stars so thought I would repost (yep still bored....). I have presented Omega with detailed resolution acrosss the core in the past but I find this can make it look a little flat so here I have kept the core bright on purpose to try and create a "ball" effect more in keeping with the old film astrophotography days..?...hope it looks ok your end? :)

This image was taken before I had some adjustments made to my ProLine to remove some random noise problems so there is some colour speckling going on in the background if you look closely (this issue is now fixed).

http://www.pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/image/79612510/original

This image was cropped to remove vignetting as I was imaging through a diagonal (:screwy:) and had no flat field light box then, now I have the excellent LightRing from AstroHandy accessories (and don't image through a diagonal:whistle:):

http://www.pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/astrohandy_lightring

Thouroughly recomend'em if you need a quality flat fielder.

Mike

[Alchemy]

punchy and resolved to the core.

me thinks now youve moved to the big smoke and bright lights that you are going to have withdrawl symtoms, ..... signs are showing already.... lovingly hovering over previous images:sadeyes:

[strongmanmike]

:lol: got it in one........:)......:sadeyes:......: screwy:...:help:

Am going up to Wiruna (ASNSW dark site) this weekend for three nights so hopefully I get my imaging fix, of course if it is cloudy I'll go mad :scared::scared::scared:

Mike

[tornado33]

plenty of resolution there. What was the cause of the random noise issue in the camera? Was it a shielding issue? In some DSLRs some reports of banding was traced down to EM radiation from autofocus lens motors and electronics
Scott

[strongmanmike]

It was a clocking issue, my chip had been incorectly clocked for some reason, this meant that there was what appeared to be noise/hot pixles that varied from frame to frame so removing them with darks was impossible, I had to dither guide which I had to do manually (ie move the scope a bit after every sub) as I use a seperate guide camera to the imaging camera (my camera control software doesn't support this capability automatically). I then median combined my subs which worked well but manually moving the scope a few pixels after each sub was annoying, also median is not the ideal combinatioin method if you can avoid it. FLI gladly rectified the problem free of charge in a 3 week turn around last year and now I don'y dither anymore and I can use the "add" command in preprocessing instead of median which is a better combination method IMO. At -35 the downloaded raw subs are very clean now.

Mike

[montewilson]

Hot stuff - Have a good/productive weekend!

[Garyh]

Looks excellent this end Mike right to the core.
I prefer it this way, being much brighter towards the middle!
Thats how it looks, not flat like some images I have seen.
Nice colors in the stars too!
:thumbsup:

[Ric]

Well resolved and very spectacular Mike.

A real beauty.

[Matty P]

Superb image Mike.

Resolved right to the core. Very well done.