Galaxies from Sculptor

[PhotonCollector]

Hi,

My name is Paul, I'm new to IceInSpace and would like to introduce myself with some of the astro images I've been producing from my backyard observatory in Newcastle, NSW.

I've attached some of my latest images, my web site is at http://www.skylab.com.au/pmsa

Clear Skies.
Paul

[asimov]

Not ANOTHER astro-pic genius!:doh: How can we folk with el-cheapo cameras compete with shots such as these!?:scared:

Just joking Paul! :D Glorious shots Paul & welcome to iceinspace.:thumbsup:

[Striker]

Welcome Paul,

Some very nice images you have their.....well done.

Nice web site aswell.

[fringe_dweller]

:welcome: Paul - and i know that name from years ago :) great site and articles btw your article "100 Brightest Galaxies for Southern Observers" fits right in with some discussions happening at the mo :D
Kearn

[Itchy]

Hi Paul

Welcome to Ice in Space. I'm fairly new here myself. Good to see another Novacastrian on board (I class myself as a Novacastrian, even though now I live in Maitland).

Nice pics and a nice website too (I think I've spent some time visiting there previously).

Feel free to check out my site if you haven't already:
http://users.bigpond.net.au/itchysastro/index.htm

Cheers

[[1ponders]]

Hi Paul and :welcome: Nice shots :thumbsup:

[Chrissyo]

Welcome to the greatest place on earth :D Nice pictures! Also, I like your terrestrial from your site :) Those sure are some impressive fish =D

[PhotonCollector]

Gee sorry Asimov, I didn't realise it was a competition. I thought this IceInSpace forum is where I could share some of my images with other aussies. Uhm.. my camera is an el-cheapo! I don't think there is a cheaper astro-camera unless you are using a 35m film camera. In fact all my astro work is extremely low budget, no autoguiders, no goto, no SBIG-11000s, all manually guided with equipment I pieced together myself.

[davidpretorius]

Welcome Paul,

No competitions here mate, lots of banter and lots of scope envy.

I love your setup on your website. That mount looks great. Silly question coming here as your images speak for themselves----> How do you go with the 12" reflector on the mount. Any tendency to rock or move. I have a 10" f5 on a dob base (trying to motorize) and may be buying asimov's super duper heavy duty eq6 mount in the next 20 years or so. A lot of feedback seems a little unsure on whether such a long beasty is practical for imaging even with a great mount!

You have every angle covered (concrete foundation are awesome!) so expect a visit from 500 of us anytime now!

Wack the kettle on, my poison is guiness, ken like lemonade, asimov eats brownies, iceman wears loud shirts, houghy will buy all your naglers...

Lots of fun here!!

[zipdrive]

beautiful images!!!!! another site added to my bookmark :)

[netwolf]

Welcome Paul your picturers are excellent. I also like your Observatory setup, good to see the Samson Mount, pity they are not made anymore.

[atalas]

:welcome: to IIS Paul ! nice shots there mate .hope to see more from you soon.

Louie :thumbsup:

[tornado33]

Howdy Paul and welcome.
Everyone, Paul and I have the same make of equatorial mount, and we both hand guide our images :) Also, we both share the same birthday :) We have both been bitten by the DSLR imaging bug as well!
Gee theres a lot of imaging in Sculptor going on of late by Ice in space members :)
Scott

[iceman]

Welcome Paul, nice introduction with some fantastic galaxy shots.

Have you got a shot of NGC55? It's one i've only recently discovered and I like it a lot!

[iceman]

And both novocastrians too! :) We've got some great talent from the Newcastle/Hunter area!

[lxbruce]

Hi Paul


I'm only very new here myself and from the Maitland area. Nice site and by the way I've been using Star Atlas Pro for a couple of years now and its great.
Bruce

[RAJAH235]

Hi Paul, :welcome: Watch out for the 'nuts', & I'm not mentioning the waacers. :P
Nice pics..... :thumbsup: :D L.

[seeker372011]

Welcome to the forum Paul. Saw your picture over at Universe today the other day and wondered why you weren't over here in IIS as well, so its great you found this forum

[ballaratdragons]

Hey, what's with all the Novacastrians joining all of a sudden. Mike, have you been advertising in the Newcastle newspaper?

Welcome guys!

Terrific astrophotography Paul.

[Greg Bryant]

Superb gallery, Paul.

[RB]

Fantastic work Paul.
Welcome to the forum and keep up the great work.


:gday:

[gaa_ian]

Welcome Paul :welcome:
Great shot they are indeed :thumbsup:

[cometcatcher]

Beautiful shots Paul.

I see you are also a fellow Samson mount user. :)

Still saving for a digital SLR here. Your unmodified 300D shots show that even a basic DSLR can be highly effective.

Keep on shooting and sharing the pics here. :)

[tornado33]

Hey that makes 3 of us using the good ol Sampson mount :)
I too use Paul's Star Atlas Pro, brilliant software for finding the "faint fuzzies"
Scott

[h0ughy]

yes and they are faint :doh: . I think Paul writes the software for you to find in some photo. :D

Congratulations Paul for signing up. We are all normal :poke:here (those from the hunter region that is) :whistle:

Is is true that you and scott were separated at birth :poke: and are identical twins :scared2: ? :rofl:

[PhotonCollector]

The samson mount handles the 12-inch OTA just fine, no it doesnt rock or move. The RA and DEC axis both are 32mm? diameter stainless - meaning it's a pretty strong mount. Even when viewing planets at high power the amount of vibration is so minimal I think it would please anyone. Balancing is the most important issue.

[PhotonCollector]

Thanks Everyone for such a warm welcome.

[PhotonCollector]

Its a strange story. It was about 20 years ago I was introduced to a Scott,
later I find out we are born on the same day, we both are astrophotographers, and we both have samson mounts with AOS telescopes. We both have Canon EOS cameras. It's very weird really. I think he's some type of cosmic twin.

[PhotonCollector]

It's nice to know someone is putting that article to use. One day I plan to revise the list.

[h0ughy]

I can hear the music playing now (twighlight zone) :rofl:

hey NBN had one of my images on the weather last night, or so i was told by Scott! :D :thumbsup:

[PhotonCollector]

Yeah thanks! Those pics of the fish were taken at Seaworld through a glass containment wall.

[PhotonCollector]

There's an image I did with my 8-inch 'scope here http://www.skylab.com.au/pmsa/ngc55.html

[PhotonCollector]

Hi Bruce, I remember you. Good to hear you like the software.

[PhotonCollector]

Hi Scott, I finally made myself find the time to join IIS. Mike Salway also recently invited me to join too, so here I am.

Sculptor is such a wonderful southern constellation, with plenty to offer in terms of large galaxies. Of couse there is N247 too in Cetus. There is a difficulty with most of the Sculptor galaxies though, and that is there surface brightnesses. Most of them are not much brighter than the sky background, so they are not easy to catch! N253 is the brightest of course, it has a surface brightness (sb) of 21.3 but N300 is much fainter with a sb of 22.9 ( about 1.6x fainter !).

[xelasnave]

Fantastic captures and work up Paul. Newcastle must becoming the astrophoto centre of Australia.. what is it something the water?. Welcome welcome and thank you for sharing your magnificent photographs with us here
alex

[xelasnave]

Had a look at your site, love the set up.. I have the same bintel 12 inch and long for the day I can mount it with my two current guide scopes. I like where the drive motor is placed for RA that seems sensible and I dont know why others dont follow this design. I thought that there was a lot of light bouncing around in those tubes the thing that surprised me with the 300mm was the relatively poor contrast. I use a "light tube" extention on my scopes. A tube in the case of the 6 inch scope it is a tube 8 inches in diameter about 2.5 feet long with 8 baffles, this goes as an extention to the scope and dramatically improves contrast for me at my site. I came up with the idea to eliminate stray star light getting into the tube. I also noticed the focuser will not travell in far enough for fotos.. It will if you use a 3x barlow but on a dob mount only Moon shots are achievable. Great site great work great equipment.
alex

[PhotonCollector]

Yes, everything you say is correct, the OTA off the shelf does not have good contrast. I corrected this by installing 6 light baffles on the inside of the OTA. If you look at the 'scope here http://www.skylab.com.au/pmsa/equip.html you will notice that you can see the first light baffle infront of the secondary spider vanes. The contrast improvement was simply astonishing after installing the baffles.

Yes, the OTA will not come to focus, that's correct! What I had to do is move the optics 41.5mm closer together to put the new focus on the ccd plane such that the focuser was mid-position. It took a while to work out that 41.5mm was the number.

The most simple method to move the optics closer together was to shorten the tube length. Another mirror mount may have did the job, but the mirror mount that comes with the OTA is very good and well worth keeping.

So now I have focus at the camera sensor plane, but I can not use the 'scope visually as the eyepieces no longer reach focus. I need to find myself a 2-inch extension barrel to extend the eyepiece focus, but the 'scope is always setup for imaging so this doesnt bother me.

[PhotonCollector]

There's a bug in the water up here called the "ASTROBUG". Apparently its been in the Hunter Valley water supply for some time.:D

[ving]

hi to both paul and bruce! :)
welcome to you both
great images paul :)

[xelasnave]

One more question Paul if I may? Did you use the opportunity of installing baffles to add strenght to the tube? Thinking about mounting mine on an equatorial mount (sortta building a fork mount for it) but it occured to me that given the lenght of the tube it may flex.. have you encountered such a problem or taken action to head that one off?? and if you can try my "light tube extention approach.. doesnot have to be a baffled tube (much better) but you will appreciate the improvement with a flat black cardboard tube, tape a wire ring on the outside to give it support.. thanks for your informative reply
alex

[PhotonCollector]

No. the baffles have nothing at all to do with OTA rigidity. In fact the baffles I made from a black foam I purchased from a nearby Clark Rubber shop.

As you can see from my images at www.skylab.com.au/pmsa (http://www.skylab.com.au/pmsa) flexure is not a problem and has not been an issue at all.

With your light tube extension - i'm not exactly sure what you mean? do you mean a dew cap? and if you do, I certainly agree with you:- that an aperature extension (1.5x longer than tube dia.) is certainly a big contrast booster.

However, there's a slight problem with me, in particular, doing that. A dew cap makes the telescope exceed the roof height of the observatory and captures any wind blowing, which in turn really mucks up guiding. But when there is no wind, yes a must have.

I had a few goes a making ones from black cardboard, but I have found even with a wire for structural support, if dew if present they will quitely become saturared and the cardboard will begin to collapse (usually while I'm guiding).
However I have always successfully used one on my 400mm telephoto lens, but it's tube diameter is much smaller of course.

I tried making one from a thin sheet of Aluminium that I rolled into a tube extension, however it turned out to be simply too heavy and greatly upset the balance of the telescope. Even though it does not feel that heavy, it's offset weight is (in my case).

Clear Skies
Paul

[xelasnave]

Thank you Paul, I had not thought of using foam.. clever. I guess my dew tube is a little longer.. if you add baffles to a dew tube you have my "light tube" its a little longer than the ratio you mentioned..anyways you are on the case. And these days if there is dew I give it away mainly because everything gets wet and I cant put it away until the next day.I live in a rain forrest and when its damp its too much... another reason to finish my observatory. I am very happy to hear the tube did not require strenghtening. And I guess, given the quality of your captures, I was expecting to hear that you had added something. I am impressed with the scopes performance, Thanks again for sharing your expertize.
alex