Lagoon Neb, Helix Neb and NGC253 with TOA150

[robgreaves]

Some images from Friday night - did an all-night'er out portable with a friend. Much more fun being out imaging rather than watching the Olympics opening ceremony :lol: Seeing was OK but by no means excellent. At least it stayed clear from 4:30pm Friday when I set up to 6:15am on Saturday when I took the rig apart.

Also, the M8 shot was actually taken with the STL cooling off, so I was quite pleased to be able to rescue it!

M8 Lagoon here: http://www.pbase.com/digitalphotons/image/101392486/original

Helix Neb here: http://www.pbase.com/digitalphotons/image/101394903

NGC253 here: http://www.pbase.com/digitalphotons/image/101397305

All images taken with my TOA150, STL11000M and AP1200GTO.

Regards,
Rob

[Peter Ward]

Rob,

This is definitely not a crayon drawing on the 'fidge effort! Well done!

Great signal depth, even at full res you've absolutely nailed the guiding. Looking forward to seeing some more
:thumbsup:

[seeker372011]

awesome-esp M8..despite your oversight in not turning on the cooling

[Peter Ward]

This is an interesting point. The KAF11002 series is pretty low noise, and provided a well calibrated dark can also be made, the image will clean up really well.

In practice I have seen little difference in images taken with the CCD chamber at -15 or -30.

[bluescope]

Very nice ngc253 and M8 ..... well done !

:thumbsup:

[strongmanmike]

What a great Olympic effort Rob, three nice images there :D

I heard you left Wiruna with some equipment troubles, you look to have made up for them even if you did forget to turn the cooling on?

I actually fell asleep during the openning ceremony :lol:. As I predicted though, all those red army soldiers really set the scene, looked like Tiananmen Square circa 1989 just with a few less tanks....what I saw was pretty spectacular though :eyepop:

Mike

[robgreaves]

Mike - from leaving Wiruna where the camera, laptop, CCDWare software and mount all had issues, to going out the other night when everything performed absolutely faultlessly... Strange! I didn't do anything different.

Peter - you're right about the generally low noise of the CCD. My M8 shot with no cooling is testament to that. I never go lower than -20'C but I know others that strive to get every fraction of a degree they can out of their chip, even using water cooling in winter. And then the SBIG documentation suggests running it at -7'C ;)

I'm sure someone could throw theoretical noise-maths at it to say there's a huge improvement, but as you say, I can't see it. I think these rules might have applied to early generation CCD's, but now the rules need re-writing.

Regards,
Rob.

[marc4darkskies]

And it's gold, gold, GOLD ... !!! Verrry nice work Rob - especially for a single night :thumbsup:

Cheers, Marcus

[g__day]

WoW!

[jase]

Lovely work Rob. IMO, pick of the bunch would be the Helix. Really shows some nice depth with the Ha data and fits the frame very well with plenty of "space" to add some dimension. Would be a classic if you're keen enough to follow through with some RGB data. Disappointing to hear of your set up woes, though pleasing to see some "come-back" images now everything is operating well again. Thanks for sharing. Look forward to seeing more.