What a night ,, !!

[ZeroID]

As a few of you have noticed I have been building an Ob in the backyard and getting ready for some astrophotography. Last night most of it all came together. The results raise more questions than answers but the way is now clear. And expensive.

Temp about 1 C ! Clear, still night. The KM 7D all charged and plenty of memory ( I thought !! ). PC's all powered up and a 2 star alignment successful.
First into the Wishing Well, 6 frames at 800 ISO 30 secs.
Then a long series on Eta C, first shots showing good colour in the camera screen.
Then around Alpha Cent area, small cluster, NGC3766 (?)
Omega Cent GC, another group of pix with varying exposures as the stars blew out.
Wasted some time trying Saturn, no good over CBD and wrong method totally.
Then thought what about M104, Sombrero. Slewed mount and it missed by only degeree or two, spotted my marker stars and lined it up in the finder, nothing to see there but a 1:30 min exposure found it. Drift apparent so centred up better and ran a series of 30 second exposures.
Finally some pix around Spica looking for a group of Galaxies just above and west of it.

Results: mixed but a start.
First, I need to both refine my alignment AND get guiding going, already working on it.
Secondly I need a lot more exposure for targets hence the above requirement. Although DSS shows a lot of colour and dust lanes etc after stacking and saving Photoshop is not seeing it. The faint stuff is getting lost in the BG LP.
Thirdly focussing a DSLR without Live View or similar is a biach ! Most of my pix are near focus but not in focus. So bloaty stars and blobs. I need a better focusser for a starter, with 10:1 reduction !!
Fouth: ANY red light in the OB is picked up in the scope by reflection etc especially if the scope is pointing near zenith. I need to sheild my desk lights better and the low red lights at the floor stay off. Don't seem to need them anyway, dark adaptation is magic.

Successes: My M104 despite limited exposure shows the outer edge dark lane and is quite amazing to see even in DSS.
Camera worked amazingly well, a bit of amp glow but darks removed that.

I'll process pix and post anything I think worth seeing for comments and advice and I need to look at my processing methods and skills.
I am so pleased with the Ob, small it may be but it kept the worst of any cold wind away and gave me a quick start and end which I probably would not have even attempted otherwise. It also shuts out a lot of low level light intrusion.

More later. I've a long way to go but I'm happy with the progress.:D

[alistairsam]

Good Stuff Brent.
There is so much to learn and refine, but it can only get better.
Have you thought of a Ha filter? From what I've read, RGBHa from light polluted areas shows promise. No substitute for dark skies, but you can't move the Obs, so your best bet would be filters and Ha even with dslr's or OSC's can add detail to suitable targets.
How about dew? Here in Melbourne, its a huge pain.
As for focusing, a 10:1 focuser goes a long way and rather than focus through live view, best bet would be focus with 10 or 15 sec exposures keeping track of how much you adjusted each time as well as with a Baht Mask.
I'm thinking of adding a reduction stepper to my focuser. I just ordered the Long perng 11:1 low profile focuser from Andrews and I have this already,
http://australia.rs-online.com/web/p/products/351-4647/, so will just add a simple wireless stepper controller driven by a picaxe in a small battery box.
I just bought Alignmaster and for me, that really works and gets polar alignment done quickly and accurately.
Look forward to the pics.

[scagman]

Hi Brent,

Thats really good to here that all went well. Looking forward to seeing the results.
Not having to set up and down each night will be great and as you said means getting out more often, even if only for a couple of hrs.

Congrates.

[ZeroID]

Hi guys,
Yeah, an Ha filter is on the cards, after the 10:1 focusser. but I'll have to get it in 2" for the camera.
Dew, sometimes, last night was dew free !! no fans required but last week was a nightmare, fans all night.
I'm going to try a Bahtinov at a bright star next and lock the focusser after. Be interested to see your reduction drive setup. I have motors and bits for Africa to DIY something up.
Alignment should be almost unnecessary being permanently setup and when I get guiding going.
Nice thing is I can also move around without disturbing the pier, fully isolated. And last nights session was only for 2 hours, finished at 9:30 mainly because the camera memory was full and both batteries flat !!
Did a bit of visual after, Sombrero, EtaC, Omega C, just back over the imaging targets
Sky looks good for tonight also, depends on SWMBO as to whether I get a chance. batteries are on charge, memory will be formatted. Nice having power and shelter all on line. Network connection is next.

[SkyViking]

Thats fantastic Brent, congratulations on your progress. Once you have your obs running you'll wonder how you ever did without!
I have everything controlled from the laptop now, except the roof and also no goto on the mount itself. It means I only need to go out, open the roof, point the scope at my target, focus, start guiding and away it goes :)
Then I keep an eye on things via remote desktop on the iPhone while we can eat, watch a movie etc, it really helps with keeping SWMBO happy :) Or if I'm in front of the PC I'll keep an eye from there of course. It takes about 10 minutes all up to get it going and 5 minutes to shut down before heading to bed. If I'm imaging something really faint and exotic then my lack of goto means I'll typically spend longer finding the target initially, but I don't mind that, I like the old fashioned way of star hopping.
Looking forward to hear about your further progress.

[ZeroID]

Thanks Rolf, your results and knowledge has been a massive motivation. I wouldn't have attempted the truss build without your input.

Just a couple I thought might be passable.

Omega Cent Glob, NGC 5139, 8 frames, 20 secs ISO 1600. DSS stacked. Had to really shift the brightness and contrast to bring this up. Dark frames took out the noise and some amp glow.

A screen cap of Sombrero, M104 on DSS. It is almost invisible in Photoshop, too faint to seperate from the background but I was pleased to just capture it anyway. Will give me an incentive to get back to it properly after I get guiding etc going. I'm just wrapped it has captured the edge dust lanes, I thought I was getting a poor double image at first :rolleyes:


I also imaged an area near Spica (West) which had numerous Mag 10-14 Galaxies and caught hints of them in DSS ( one for sure ) but a long way from enough photons to be useful. And this was over the CBD without any filters. Need 2" CLS filter and a 10:1 focusser.

Eta C was just washed out in red\purple dust, again needs a lot more exposure to capture the real details as not enough to get the separation needed.

But it will do for a start.

Saw a mod to convert a single speed focusser to fine adjustment, must give it a go. Would also enable motor focussing.

[tlgerdes]

Hi Brent,

Motor focusers dont use 10:1 reduction anyway, they just clamp on to the shaft directly. Go get a $70 Orion one for a start.

[SkyViking]

That's a great start, congratulations Brent. Definitely better than my first M104 which must now be some 9 years ago! How time flies.
Focus on M104 seems a bit off, but with manual focus @ 1:1 you'd certainly expect that. I'm using the Shoestring FCUSB box for focus control. You can hook it up to any motorised focuser and control it from a laptop. Pretty cheap at US$79, check it out here: http://www.store.shoestringastronomy.com/products_fc.htm

[ZeroID]

Geez, you guys can spend my money faster than I can !!
Thats $150 Aus\US (~$200 NZ ) plus freight before I've even checked the limit on my credit card !!

I think a 450D Canon is next to get LiveView and PC control. Unless I can see the focus a motorised focusser is not much good. I'm using the camera's viewfinder at present. Way too small and with my bung eye not really good.

Rolf, the M104 pic is just a screen capture of the DSS stack ( 23 frames ) so not really a proper astropic. When I save it and open with Photoshop it is so dim it is impossible to pull out any definition. Need more photons !! As to focus, see my own earlier comments about problems there.

[tlgerdes]

Brent, I am always happy to help someone spend their money, it makes me happy.:D

Focusing on a large screen is so much easier, you will see the benefits straight away. Dont forget your Bahtinov mask.

When you import into photoshop your pictures will always be dark, that is why you hear about people 'stretching' the data, playing with curves and levels will allow you represent the information that is contained in the pixels.

All you detail is contained in the lower 15% of the pixel values across the spectrum, photoshop displays the full 100% so you see 85% blackness so to speak.

This is quite normal. DSS has an ability to stretch the data on screen to show you the data captured, but save to disk the absolute values so you can process it better.

[ZeroID]

Cheers Trevor, now I need to figure out which controls do what, where and when ...
I've done heaps of photo processing in the past but they have always been minor tweaks of colour and exposure. This is a whole new ballpark.
We'll get there in the end.