Really Quick Omega Cent..

[AlexN]

Hi,

Heres the first light from my TMB/LOMO 80mm F/6 triplet...

Image was taken using an MPCC to help flatten the field.

Consists of 4x300sec images, clouds have settled and are ruining my night thus far, however I remain optimistic that they will pass and I'll get a run at Corona Australis later tonight...

Light pollution is the enemy!

[renormalised]

Very good for a quickie, Alex:D

[Tandum]

I see a purple circle around the cluster, is that my monitor cos there's lots of star colour?

[AlexN]

Thanks Carl, for only 20 mins data I'm very happy with it..


Robin:
the halo you see is a bi-product of trying to remove light pollution without destroying too much data, gradient exterminator might have had something to do with it too...

[Tandum]

Ahh .. then you'll need a light box as well as that dew controller :D

[Lumen Miner]

Oh nice!! When was this taken? Are you capturing now?

[AlexN]

Capturing again now Mitchell, however I've moved to Corona Australis.

This image wsa taken between 6:50pm and 7:30PM tonight.

[AlexN]

Robin, Are you offering to build me one are ya?? :D

[AlexN]

Heres a link to a 100% crop of the cluster itself... Excuse the slight burnout in the core.. Wasn't there when the image was a 16bit tiff? JPG issue I suspect..

http://www.darkskyau.com/cm/displayimage.php?album=16&pos=2

[Lumen Miner]

I love it when people update as they are going.!!! :D


I'm just hoping the cloud lifts in Sydney, like it did last night.

[AlexN]

Brisbane was the same last night, was cloudy at 7:30 pm, by 10pm it was one of the best nights I've seen in a long time... I could clearly see the milky way from my yard, which is rare considering my location.. The clouds have parted, although I'm giving corona australis a miss and going for The Antares area..

[Tandum]

I'll help YOU build one. The question is how big. How long will this scope last :P

Yes these hi level clouds are a pain :(

[AlexN]

This scope is staying with me forever.. I will be buried with this one! I've got a grand total of 120mins data from it thus far and I'm in love.. :)

[Matty P]

That looks great Alex. Looks nice and sharp for a quick pic.

It is good to hear that you recieved your TMB safely and had first light already.

Nicely done. Looking forward to more from you and this scope. ;)

PS. Man you really have had a fair share of equipment since you started this hobby, Haven't you?! :P

:thumbsup:

[AlexN]

Not that im counting, but I think im up to 10 scopes in 1.5 years in astronomy.. :)

8" newt, 6" Achro, Megrez 102, Megrez 90, C11, ST80, 8" RC, ZS66SD, ZS70ED, TMB 80/480... Not to mention the QHY8, 2 SBIG's, 2 mounts... Yep.. Been through some gear! :D

[renormalised]

How much compression did you use in the jpeg?? You can see artifacts in the background, so that's definitely not core burn due to overexposure. Although even if you leave it at 100%, the fact that normal jpeg ratios for Y:U:V colour space is 4:4:4 means you're going to loose some resolution in your image.

[AlexN]

Carl - The 100% crop is 100% quality, background artifacts might be due to the heavy processing required to remove gradients and the like from the image... I've still got the camera in the scope and will take some T-shirt flats tomorrow morning and maybe fire up a re-pro on this one... I've been working on the Rho Ophiuchi image for over 2 hours now, and I've discovered that untill I take flats, the image is not going to be worth posting... So tomorrow morning, flats and flat darks will be taken.. Then I'll have another go at it.. The data is there (although only 1hr of exposure) just needs proper calibration before its going to be anything more than a mess! :)

[renormalised]

That would introduce artifacts. But there'd definitely be some jpeg issues cropping up. Have you tried posting them as png files?? That's lossless compression, but I don't know if we can post those here. Good thing with png files is they handle zooming exceptionally well, so you can resize a pic without too much worry.