M42 image from Officina Stellare

[avandonk]

This is the latest image from Officina Stellare taken with an RH200

http://www.officinastellare.com/zoom.php?img=http://officinastellare.agaweb.it/image/resize/id/757/width/930/height/410


from here

http://www.officinastellare.com/gallery.php


Bert

[strongmanmike]

Happy Days ahead :thumbsup:

Mike

[avandonk]

Yes Mike 5:5:5 min RGB and 100min HA is a combination I have to carefully consider. It seems they have used the HA as a luminance to be modulated by the RGB?

Bert

[TrevorW]

Would love to be able to afford its the big brother

Oh well lotto win

[Peter.M]

I wouldn't have thought the dust would show up in a HA image, this is crazy for 5 minutes of RGB though.

[cventer]

The fact that they got so much color form 5:5:5 RGB is pretty darn good.

Cant say I like the image/processing though or composition. I would to see this with more clear luminance as stellar profiles from Ha are naturaly going to be very small.

[atalas]

Oh boy,what a scope!they've actually done a great job on this and If they had some more luminosity in those stars....drool.

[Peter Ward]

I wish you well with this scope Bert, but am I missing seeing the Emperor's clothes here? :shrug:

Delightfully fast optics for sure, but closer inspection easily reveals stars elongated North/South (see attached)

The colour saturation is extreme.... and quite odd ( eg: the apricot coloured core ) hence I am very surprised that they would use that particular image as an example of their optics.

One would hope a guiding error rather than an optical one is causing the eggy stars.:question:

[alpal]

I really like that M42 picture.
It's got such a wide field from their 24 x 36 mm camera sensor.
I've never seen the dust with that sort of detail before.
The RH 200 would be a nice scope to own.

[LightningNZ]

The field is extreme and the amount of detail recorded in such a short time is awesome. That said, the colours a just whacked. Possibly with only 5 mins for each colour it's not enough for decent graduation and so looks completely over the top?

Peter - that's east-west dude. The image has east at top if I'm not mistaken. Certainly north is at the right.

Cheers,
Cam

[Peter Ward]

No worries Bro. :)

I was referring to the image aspect......not the sky.

[avandonk]

You are quite correct Peter. It looks like a bit of backlash in the DEC axis. I agree the colour is a bit cartoony.

I upsized the image and adjusted it to something more realistic.

Here 3 MB

http://d1355990.i49.quadrahosting.com.au/2011_12/M42_RH200col.jpg


Here is the red channel with the HA I presume. 5MB

http://d1355990.i49.quadrahosting.com.au/2011_12/M42_RH200_red.jpg

The stars look far better than either blue or green.

Bert

[Peter Ward]

I'm still not seeing the Armani suit Bert :)

At that focal length, accurate guiding should be a trivial exercise.

I'd put it down to focal plane tilt. F3.0 is *so* terse with any misalignment. (making me worry about the F3.8 RHA incarnation)

Interesting none-the-less.

[avandonk]

Here is an enhanced version using EasyHDR. 4 MB

http://d1355990.i49.quadrahosting.com.au/2011_12/M42_RH200_HDR.jpg


I am looking foward to see what I can do with a 16 bit camera and multiple exposures to record the full dynamic range of some difficult objects.


Bert

[RobF]

How long before you've assembled all the pieces of your new weapon of mass destruction now Bert? :)

[avandonk]

Rob I have the camera, filter wheel and filters. The RH200 with Atlas focuser should arrive within a week or so. The PMX mount is still months away. I will most probably set up on the trusty EQ6 for the time being and try to get up to speed with all the new complexities, both the known and unknown.

Should keep me out of trouble for a while.

Bert

[avandonk]

If it was tilt Peter the elongation would vary in the direction of tilt. At some point there would be a line of no elongation orthogonal to the tilt. It looks like DEC backlash or overcorrection to me. It could also be slight creeping flexure as that is roughly the direction it would occur depends on the latitude of course..

Bert

[marco]

Not quite correct Bert. From the photographer's website:

"This is a new image from the OS Veloce RH200. The image was taken by my friend Giovanni Dal Lago and it is a 100min Ha (bin2x2) + 5:5:5 RGB (bin3x3). I then added about 100min of LRGB (bin1x1) taken with the RH200 some months ago in Austria at Sattlegger.
The colur datas was still not enough for the faint parts so a little contrinution (20%) from my old M42 area image was used to add deepness and richer color contrast (that's why very faint spikes can be seen on the most luminous stars). The overall softness and haloes on bright parts are only due to the color component." (http://www.flickr.com/photos/astrojohnny/6593519177/in/photostream)

So this is a total of 100m+5m+5m+5m+100m+20%(?) of 6 hours of a collage taken with telescopes up to 14.5 inches of diameter (here the link http://www.flickr.com/photos/astrojohnny/5154353875/in/photostream). If the 20% is correct (but I imagine not easy to evaluate its effective contribution) we are talking of more than 3.5 hours of HaLRGB data @ f/3 plus about 1.5 hours of the collage.

The final image to me is quite pretty but we are not talking about little light integration for a very fast instrument. A more realistic evaluation will be done by you as you have the OTA in your hand and with the processing from the original unstretched fits..

Clear skies
Marco

[avandonk]

So why put this up as an RH200 image? It just demeans any credibility of the capability of the RH200. To then even quote 5 minute exposures is just meaningless when you say there is 3.5 hours of data at f3. On top of this data from longer slower scopes were used for what star definition?


I am sure that I will be very happy with the performance of the RH200. My first simple evaluation was how the hell is the dust so clear with 5:5:5 minutes of RGB and 100 minutes of HA?

Thanks for the heads up.

Only time will tell what this optic can do in my hands.

By the way are all the other RH200 images really done with an RH200 or are they hybrids like this one?

Bert

[gregbradley]

A very nice image but rather dishonest/deceptive of Officina Stellare to claim the image when the contribution from their scope is only some colour. Nevertheless Bert I am sure the scope will be amazing.

Tom Davis has often used 2 scopes with a fast widefield scope adding colour. Its a good technique and one I intend using with 2 setups going at once to maximise clear night imaging productivity.

Greg.

[Peter Ward]

Indeed Bert. But I took the liberty of running CCDinspector over the data (attached) which is why it looks like tilt to me.

More the pity the exposure times were a fiddle. Doesn't help when you are trying to compare various pieces of gear with fudged data.

[avandonk]

Peter even any objective measure is merely conjecture with this image.

The RH200 has a simple three bolt collimation adjustment and a straightforward means to adjust/align the optic axis orthogonal to the imaging camera.

With an Atlas focuser this once set by pixel peeping should be very controllable.

Bert

[Peter.M]

Worth noting that any image imperfections such as tilt and collimation error may have been introduced into this image from the other scopes that were used to compose it.

[gregbradley]

That's right Bert. That is totally not an issue with that tilt adjustment on the scope.

Greg.

[Peter Ward]

Indeed, as PeterM suggests the errors may have been from the other 'scopes .

But the fact remains that image shows 14% of focal plane tilt, which I wouldn't put down to Dec backlash which manifests as a very different plot in CCDinspector (typical example attached)

[avandonk]

When I get everything adjusted with the new system I will run CCD Inspector over a few images just for you Peter. It may lead to a final tiny reiterative tweak in collimation and sensor alignment.

Bert

[Peter Ward]

You don't need to do it for me Bert. :)

CCDInspector is a terse tool. It really only provides relative data, but can clearly steer you in the right direction.

The flattest-field of of any scope I've ever used is that of the AP155 with 4" field corrector... and even it shows a shallow (6%) tilt with my 16803 Sensor based CCD. I found myself chasing my tail trying the shim the system, as gravity, as always, won.

CCDInspector results attached

[dvj]

Has anyone outside of the Officina Stellari folks have the RH200? There web site gallery has inconsistant star shape quality.

I see the prices climbing on the RH200. Now almost $9000 in the U.S. And that's without the Atlas focuser. Add taxes and shipping and it's easily over $10K. :shrug:

[gregbradley]

Especially as the US$ is 14% stronger against the Euro since April 11.

Greg.

[avandonk]

Here is CCD inspector run over my Canon F2.8L 300mm lens at f/3.6. FoV is 7.0 X 4.6 degrees.


The image used 3MB

http://d1355990.i49.quadrahosting.com.au/2011_12/LT_P5_15s_SL_8.jpg

Results below

Bert

[avandonk]

I used this HA image from the Officina Stellare site taken with the RH200. FoV 3.4 X 2.3 degrees. 3MB


http://d1355990.i49.quadrahosting.com.au/2011_12/RZ_ZRH001_Nat.jpg


Results below

Looks very good to me. If anything the field curvature seems to be slightly overcorrected.

The RH200 with the FLI 16803 has a FoV of 3.5 X 3.5 degrees.


Bert

[multiweb]

That looks indeed excellent. An FSQ106ED will typically give you 11%. 13% for this aperture is incredible. Anyway the picture speaks for itself. It's a fantastic system. CCDIS results are only indicative and are affected but the DSOs in the field photograph used (you can see the central pattern in the color coded image follows the luminosity of the nebs in the shot). If you do a field test on Omega Cent you'll get a bulge in the middle of your field. The results are not 100% reproducible so don't rule out your system based on CCDIS only. Everything is relative also. The difference between the max and min FWHM is .5 "... C'mon! We're splitting hair here. :lol: I can live with a shot like that. Times over.

[LightningNZ]

My personal feeling is that some of the mountings and some of the pre-processing has been less than Stellare...

Cam

[strongmanmike]

Totally agree with you Marc - a sane response :rolleyes:

I really look forward to Berts efforts with this little Gem, I hope the Italians have her working like they do their Ferrari's.

:thumbsup:

Mike

[ballaratdragons]

Good to see this is an Amateur website :thumbsup: :rolleyes:
The image looks fantastic.

You want perfect, buy Hubble!

[Peter Ward]

Careful what you wish for! :lol:

Good to see some nice analysis here.

Focal plane tilt at *really* fast f-ratios can be a bugger....which was my original point and as it turns out.....Bert has demonstrated very well with his Canon F2.8 data

I'm sure his RHA will be a great scope :thumbsup:

[cventer]

Got me intrigued. I ran CCD Inspector over an image I took 3 nights ago with my fsq

Read it and weep!!!!:thumbsup::D:P:lol:

Mind you this is only 106mm and f5

[gregbradley]

It looks beautiful and your observatory looks like its in a stunningly beautiful environment.

Its very compact.

Greg.

[multiweb]

Not bad but you need a lot more than 190 stars for an accurate reading. Try a shot of 3000 stars, 1mn exposure in the milkyway region.

[astrojoe]

Hi everybody!

I'm Johnny Paglioli from Italy and I'm the one who processed this image. I would like to give You some details about it since I've seen this post only recently and there are some doubts about.
The image is essentially an Ha image of about 100min exposure taken By Giovanni Dal Lago with the veloce RH200 using a Fli ML11002 with an Astrodon Ha5nm filter in bin 2x2. The color components where been acquired by me and Gino Bucciol on the Austrian alps last year, while testing the scope (still a prototipe) and where just 5:5:5 min in bin 2x2. Since the image still lack color saturation, I've used some contribution from my old image of that area and I've blended in just colors in a percentage of about 20%.
What You see here is the Ha data used as a luminance and the 5:5:5 min as colors + the 20% contribution of the old image JUST to better colorize the results. Since the luminance is 100% coming from the data acquired with the veloce, I think is quite indicative of what can be done with this scope in about 100min using Ha in bin 2x2.

Hope this help!

Ciao da JOE

[astrojoe]

Hi everybody!

I'm Johnny Paglioli from Italy and I'm the one who processed this image. I would like to give You some details about it since I've seen this post only recently and there are some doubts about.
The image is essentially an Ha image of about 100min exposure taken By Giovanni Dal Lago with the veloce RH200 using a Fli ML11002 with an Astrodon Ha5nm filter in bin 2x2. The color components where been acquired by me and Gino Bucciol on the Austrian alps last year, while testing the scope (still a prototipe) and where just 5:5:5 min in bin 2x2. Since the image still lack color saturation, I've used some contribution from my old image of that area and I've blended in just colors in a percentage of about 20%.
What You see here is the Ha data used as a luminance and the 5:5:5 min as colors + the 20% contribution of the old image JUST to better colorize the results. Since the luminance is 100% coming from the data acquired with the veloce, I think is quite indicative of what can be done with this scope in about 100min using Ha in bin 2x2.

Hope this help!

Ciao da JOE
http://www.iceinspace.com.au/vbiis/images/buttons/edit.gif (http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/editpost.php?do=editpost&p=906568)

[naskies]

Very pretty! I like the vibrant blues.