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View Full Version here: : Two wide fields on a double arm drive.


rcheshire
07-10-2012, 03:23 PM
Here's a couple of wide fields taken with a FujiFilm XPro1, mounted on a double arm drive. Each 7 or 9 30 second exposures at ~90mm f/2.4 iso800. I turned the drive off for 10 - 15 seconds between shots to dither the frames. It worked well - more frames would have been better.

Bias, dark and flat frames, cooked up in the Pixinsight BatchProcessing script, then into Ivo's Star Tools for a general clean up, before saturating in Pixinsight. Only because I can't seem to get that part in Stars Tools right.

Higher resolution (http://www.astrobin.com/users/rowland_cheshire/)

Larryp
07-10-2012, 03:50 PM
Nice images!

RickS
07-10-2012, 03:54 PM
They look like nice images, Rowland, but I wonder if compressing them down to 200KB isn't doing them any favours? Images with thick star fields seem to suffer especially badly...

rcheshire
07-10-2012, 05:30 PM
You're absolutely right Rick. I'm just trying to save bandwidth. I'll rework the resampling and post again.

Poita
09-10-2012, 01:42 PM
Did you build the drive yourself?

rcheshire
09-10-2012, 05:58 PM
Peter. I designed and built it myself with some optimizations. Microprocessor stepper motor control and improved geometry for more accurate tracking. I get a kick out of using it because it is so easy to set up and quite accurate when properly aligned.