My favourites

[gregbradley]

I have been reorganising my images and made a selection of my favorites from the last few years. Several of these images have not been posted here before.

There are about 14 images:

All were taken from my dark site and were taken with refractors or Tak BRC250. Cameras were ST2000XM (1), STL11 (about 4 or 5), Apogee U16M or FLI Microline 8300. Scopes were FSQ106ED, FSQ106N, Tak FS152, TEC 180L, AP140, Tak BRC250. Mount was always Tak NJP.

http://www.pbase.com/gregbradley/favourites

Greg.

[Tilt]

A sensational collection there Greg, incredible detail in the images you have captured.

Michael

[gregbradley]

Thanks Michael.

It represents a hell of a lot of work.

Greg.

[leon]

Great to look at Greg on a wet Saturday afternoon, ;) well done mate, i enjoyed the whole collection. :thumbsup:

Leon :thumbsup:

[gregbradley]

You're more than welcome Leon!

Greg.

[Tamtarn]

Super selection Greg we can see the benefit of all that work for sure :thumbsup:

[AlexN]

Fantastic set indeed.. Love the horse head close up M83..

[BerrieK]

Thankyou for posting your favourites Greg, they are a truly beautiful collection.

The Venus transit with the jumbo is rather quirky - fantastic - I like it a lot.

[marki]

Wow Greg, what a fantastic group of pics. All credit to your hard work and skill.

Mark

[TrevorW]

:thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup::thum bsup:

[jase]

All grand images Greg. Your work is solid and consistent. Apologies if you don't like what I'm about to say, but I actually enjoy your earlier images with the 12.5" RC. NGC6744 and NGC6188 (http://www.pbase.com/gregbradley/image/83117651/large), I'm particularly fond of. While I can partly understand your motives for getting rid of the RC, I felt you had that rig really dialled in with excellent output. Even if you only get to produce a quality image once every few months in my opinion it's worth it. Productive work is that of quality over quantity. Regardless, thanks for sharing your favourites with us. Really nice panel. Looking forward to more.

[richardo]

Some excellent images there Greg!

I knew you had some gear in the past, but.... woooo:eyepop:

Thanks for sharing your hard work!

All the best
Rich

[strongmanmike]

"Some" gear??? man, Greg is the equipment man :thumbsup:

Nice selection Greg, your prolific imaging is paying off with great improvement in your processing skills and image quality over the last couple of years, well done.

Mike

[Bassnut]

Thats a good selection Greg, a bit of variety and yes, youve certainly improved over the years. Excellent work work.

[gregbradley]

Thanks very much Barb.



I like those as well, especially the Horsehead.



Yes it was pretty wild. I first saw it in the viewfinder of the Nikon D70 I was using. An amazing coincidence. You can see the distortion the exhaust of the jets engines caused.

[quote=marki;422205]Wow Greg, what a fantastic group of pics. All credit to your hard work and skill.

Thanks for that. It is a lot of work but it really is just fun not work.





Yes those came out well with the RCOS. I will be doing more long focal length work later on. But that is most likely to be a CDK F6.8 and large aperture. F9 is hard when you travel and reducers don't work on RCOSs that well with large chipped cameras.



Yes it is quite an assembly of gear but I am happy with what I have now.



Thanks Mike. It is a very enjoyable hobby and one where you definitely don't have to worry about putting on sun screen!



Thanks Fred I appreciate it.

Greg.

[Quark]

What a lovely selection of images Greg,

I think that in most of us lurks a yearning to get into astrophotography. So many people that post on IIS, that are just discovering the delights of amateur astronomy, express an interest and long term goal of getting into astro imaging. As you would know it is a steep learning curve indeed.

However the work that you and other experienced astro photographers on IIS post is really inspirational to the rest of us, still at the bottom end of that learning curve.

Thank you for posting these fine images.
Regards
Trevor

[CoolhandJo]

What an inspiration. Fantastic collection. Why not post some of you 2nd best! Love to see them too!

[Paul Haese]

Really nice images Greg. My favourites are the Vela SN remnant and the close up of the horse head. Great stuff.

[strongmanmike]

Yeh daahh... ya sure? :rolleyes:

Mike
Jealousy is a curse :P

[madwayne]

A truly great collection Greg and I am so happy to have one of your "rejects" in my kit. It is still like new and I am doing my best to it justice.

As a suggestion for your next collection can I suggest you put together your road to greatness. A collection of your first images through to your latest images, perhaps in date order. This will give budding imagers an idea of how long the road, or as Martin Pugh decribed it to me slippery dip, really is. I would do one myself but I have only been happy enough with two or three of mine to post them on here:lol:.

Thanks again for sharing your collection and I hope you take my suggestion on board. Maybe others with skills of a level like yours might care to do the same.

All the best.

Regards
Wayne

[bluescope]

Nice collection Greg ... would have liked to know which scope, camera etc took the images. Here I go again giving you more suggestions for work mate ... sorry !

:thumbsup:

[Craig_L]

Wonderful set of images and as others have said, inspirational.

[gregbradley]

Thank you for your kind comments Trevor.



Hehehe.







I could do that, I have kept everything I started out with a Nikon D70 I modified myself and a Meade LX90. You know a widefield lens and a modified DSLR are a great way to start.





Thanks Craig, I appreciate that.

[Tom Davis]

All of the images are excellent. My fav however is the Venus transit with the jet. Great job!

Tom

[multiweb]

Like an art gallery. So many wonderful pictures. Great inspiration and motivation to get out there and try ourselves. :thumbsup: Thanks for sharing all this great work and tips over the years.

[gregbradley]

Thanks Tom. The Venus shot was a stroke of luck.



Thanks Marc. This is a great forum for imaging.

Greg.

[RB]

Greg, what a wonderful collection of favourite images you have there !
A collection to be very proud of.

Do you have a favourite scope, one that stands out in your mind, out of all the scopes you've used over that time?

[aworley]

Thanks Greg, they were truly inspirational....

But really, the venus transit and jumbo jet??? Ok.....you must have contacts in high places to get Qantas to fly a jet in your light path when venus is transiting........:D Fantastic!!!

Alex

[gregbradley]

I guess overall winner would be the TEC180FL. But they all have different things each does extremely well. FSQ for widefield is somewhat unbeatable, AP140 with the compressor is probably the only FSQ beater, the Tak BRC is a marvellous imaging instrument, F5 is so quick with 10 inches of aperture.

But if I only kept one it'd be the TEC180. It has the ability to do it all.
Also a large APO is very sensational visually. I mean raw visual impact of beauty of view. I well remember my first views through my brand new Tak FS152 and being surprised at how fantastic and bright the views were. Wow.

I now have a 4 inch FS152 dedicated reducer that probably will make the TEC180 do F5.6, with a large chipped camera and most likely round stars to the corners at medium widefield and 180mm of APO aperture. Plus with the ML8300 it will image galaxies. There is a certain raw appeal to APO images. Smooth and very sharp. But aperture rules in long focal length imaging and reflectors give bang for aperture buck. I am waiting to see how the larger CDKs work out. There are quite a few out there but for some reason noone is posting an images. Perhaps its bugged. Anyway that is a future project and not something in the very near future.

Greg.

[gregbradley]

Thanks Alex. The other aspect about that image is it shows Venus's atmosphere. See the different colour above and below Venus? I believe that was first proof way back that Venus had an atmosphere. Its atmosphere is refracting the sunlight and causing the colour. Or at least that is what I think is the case.

Greg.