Saturday Night Delight.

[Tandum]

I had the opportunity to plug an 11002 mono camera into my Tak FS-102 last night. I managed to get the reducer in the chain so the tak was running close to 612mm focal length.

Expecting trouble during the night I cut exposure time down to 300sec Lum subs binned x1, 100sec RGB subs binned x2 and a few 600 sec Ha subs. We did indeed have mount problems but luckily we sorted these out and it was clear through to dawn.

While processing these I found the red and blue filters as well as the Ha and lum filters were reversed so I didn't exactly get what I wanted but I got something.

2 hours data total per image and these have been downsized a lot to get under 200k :P

[RobF]

They're both beautiful images Robin, even with some moon and the time you have. Perhaps a bit too much green in the M8/M20, but of course you're more interested in FOV and detail in these first processing efforts. Great catches for a night's work.

Oh No! Why on earth did you put an 11000 chip in the back of the Tak - you must know you've just lost you're footing on the slippery slope again.....! :P
Love that Eta field.

[Paul Haese]

Nice looking image Robin. Which 11002 camera did you put on the back of the FS? That presents a great field of view. The TSA has the same diameter but clearly not the same f ratio. Interesting idea. I had thought a 11002 would vignette.

[Tandum]

Yeah the moon was up til late but forgetting to shoot Ha flats and then finding Ha was really Lum has upset the images. I'll have a go at sudo flats and then somehow combining heavily exposed L with 5min Ha later, I was just too anxious to see the FOV this morning. The image scale there is just over 3arcsec/pixel :)



That's from pmrid's atik Paul with a qhy wheel and 2" nose. The wheel has 54mm openings as does the camera. The camera sensor has a 43mm diagonal and the fs-102 provides a 50mm image circle. I have cropped off some corners but it looks more like a flats issue than vignetting. I was hoping to get it going on the fs-60 which can do a 45mm image circle for a look see, but that 53mm thread on the flattener was a problem :P

[RickS]

A great FOV, Robin. I'm also very jealous that you got a clear night at 10CH without me ;)

Cheers,
Rick.

[Tandum]

The fog didn't show up till 5am last night Rick, but it was pretty wet, lots of dew about. I had the tak on the titan so spent the night in the warm room nice and dry, thanks Pete :)

[Paul Haese]

Well that's great news Robin. I might have to try the TSA (2.7" focusor) and the STL11K together at some point.

[RobF]

Could have been a lot worse - you might have spent 2hrs shooting Ha without setting Maxim to save any of it (like I managed Fri night!) :mad2:

[gregbradley]

Very nice images Robin.

Greg.

[Stevec35]

Very attractive images although the lagoon and trifid look a bit green.

Cheers

Steve

[marc4darkskies]

Nice images Robin. I think you've nailed the colours in Eta - well done! I agree with others on the Lagoon though - some green bias there. They definitely need to be presented at a higher res though - why not splurge on a PBase, Smugmug or Flickr subscription?

Cheers, Marcus

[Tandum]

Peter has been using it with NB filters on his Edge 14 and binning the subs. I think he's going to try it on his Northgroup 127 after seeing these :) I think I'd have to crop them heavily if I'd used the RC8 though. I haven't bothered with a flattener for that one.


That's a new one, I haven't tried that trick yet :)


It's almost like having a new camera :P


I've run green killer over it and reposted. I think it's probably best to combine images at night, it's too bright in the middle of the day to see it clearly in the monitor.


Yeah, I thought reducing these from 4000x to 1200x then using less than 50% quality for the jpegs was a bit heavy handed as well. I've got coppermine running on my website (http://starshed.net/)so they'll end up there when I sort out the Lum and Ha stuff.

[Ross G]

Two good looking photos Robin.


Ross.

[Tandum]

Cheers Ross. The images are so big you can crop out stuff and it still looks reasonable. Here's a triffid crop.

[DavidTrap]

Great shots Robin! Very impressed with the field of view on your Tak. Are you using the genuine FS-102/128 reducer?

Why do all the great nights in SEQ coincide with me being on call!!!!! I had thought about setting up to do some Ha in the backyard, but saw some cloud roll through about 7pm, so watched a movie instead. Got up early to do some photography, so didn't waste the weather entirely.

DT

[strongmanmike]

Yeh great shots Robin, both of them :thumbsup:

Having a big field is pretty useful huh? ;)

Look forward to more :thumbsup:

Mike

[Tandum]

Yep Dave, that is with the 2.7inch tak reducer for the 102 and 128 FS scopes. I had a 2" ocular on the reducer and the 2" nose of the camera was hanging about 10mm out of that to get distances close. There's a little bit of droop in it but it looks to have worked ok :lol:



Not to mention the star colour which seems to be really weak in all my qhy9 shots compared to this one. Not too sure about more Mike, but this was definitely worth a look see for me :)

[Tandum]

A few people have asked for bigger images. Here you go :)

ETA (http://starshed.net/images/NGC3372-HaLRGB.jpg)

M8-M20 (http://starshed.net/images/M20(en)-HaLRGB.jpg)

[RobF]

Really, REALLY nice work Robin.
Thanks for putting those up :thumbsup:

Those Taks sure put up a nice wide flat field :love:

[Tandum]

Hmmm, Refractors, let me introduce you to the dark side :)

I've put the full frame images in the gallery.

Have not had time to repo them, I've had more work on than I can do for a change :thumbsup:

[prokyon]

Hi Robin,

great results! Especially Trifid and Lagoon.

Werner