bluescope
22-12-2008, 03:20 PM
Hi All
This is a rushed, not very good image from last night. I was sick of looking at my pristine black skies and not being able to do some imaging as my observatory is still in pieces in my garage ... so I layed a few slabs by the side of my house and setup my scope and notebook etc ( which I hadn't used for atsronomy before ). I had installed CCDOPS on it before moving and the disks are no doubt in a box somewhere. Ofcourse the inevitable message flashed on screen " Windows has found New Hardware ... and can't find drivers for this device " so I had to log on to SBIG.com and download latest driver etc. This was all taking up precious time as an ominous cloud mass was looming from the west .... finally the ST2000XCM kicked into life and I could start alignment, calibration etc. By this time it was around 11.30pm and the clouds ( which are very difficult to see in dark skies ) had gotten a lot closer .... in fact I only had a clear hole in them around the LMC and SMC. Not to be deterred I slewed to NGC2070 and began a run. Well out of 7 frames before the cloud cover wiped all the sky out only 4 didn't prematurely self terminate due to cloud obliterating the guide star and ofcourse the target. Anyway this image is the result of stacking the 4x360 sec exposures. Minimum processing has been applied .... but I think my focusing was a little off etc. I was still pleased just to be out with my gear again trying to image after being here for three weeks.
I can't wait 'till I have completely clear skies to be able to do a decent session and also I have to get my act together and get my observatory back in action, I really don't like lugging, aligning and calbrating etc every time I want to image, it sucks !
Anyway a MERRY XMAS to everyone, see you again soon.
:thumbsup:
details :
4x360 sec exposures @ -17
WO FLT110 F7 Triplet Apo with WO 4" TMB field flattener
SBIG ST2000XCM ... NO FILTERS ... self guided with CCDOPS v5
SkyWatcher EQ6 Pro
Stacked in DSS v3.2.1
Slight adjustments, image reduction, PS CS3
This is a rushed, not very good image from last night. I was sick of looking at my pristine black skies and not being able to do some imaging as my observatory is still in pieces in my garage ... so I layed a few slabs by the side of my house and setup my scope and notebook etc ( which I hadn't used for atsronomy before ). I had installed CCDOPS on it before moving and the disks are no doubt in a box somewhere. Ofcourse the inevitable message flashed on screen " Windows has found New Hardware ... and can't find drivers for this device " so I had to log on to SBIG.com and download latest driver etc. This was all taking up precious time as an ominous cloud mass was looming from the west .... finally the ST2000XCM kicked into life and I could start alignment, calibration etc. By this time it was around 11.30pm and the clouds ( which are very difficult to see in dark skies ) had gotten a lot closer .... in fact I only had a clear hole in them around the LMC and SMC. Not to be deterred I slewed to NGC2070 and began a run. Well out of 7 frames before the cloud cover wiped all the sky out only 4 didn't prematurely self terminate due to cloud obliterating the guide star and ofcourse the target. Anyway this image is the result of stacking the 4x360 sec exposures. Minimum processing has been applied .... but I think my focusing was a little off etc. I was still pleased just to be out with my gear again trying to image after being here for three weeks.
I can't wait 'till I have completely clear skies to be able to do a decent session and also I have to get my act together and get my observatory back in action, I really don't like lugging, aligning and calbrating etc every time I want to image, it sucks !
Anyway a MERRY XMAS to everyone, see you again soon.
:thumbsup:
details :
4x360 sec exposures @ -17
WO FLT110 F7 Triplet Apo with WO 4" TMB field flattener
SBIG ST2000XCM ... NO FILTERS ... self guided with CCDOPS v5
SkyWatcher EQ6 Pro
Stacked in DSS v3.2.1
Slight adjustments, image reduction, PS CS3