Corona Australis Aussie Style

[SimmoW (SIMON)]

Some of us Aussies are lazy sods, unlike Greg's great image, this is only 46 mins worth of subs @ 2 mins each using the Sony A7s OSC camera.

Still only testing and developing the imaging system at this stage, lots yet to improve but making pleasing progress.

Managed to find the zoomed live view for focusing, but it's hardly optimal twiddling knobs with fat thumbs compared to elec. focusing! Esp at these focal lengths. Just received the helical focuser for the guidecam, and Gold Focus for the main cam. So once I can calibrate the guidecam focus to the Sony, focus should be far better.

Managed to get Maxim DL humming for guiding, but then have discovered I have a seriously loose TSOAG9 OAG camera connection! Once I solidify that I hope the guding will be far better. Oh, and I still need to fine tune the RCC1 corrector.

Higher rez pic here

[LewisM]

Nothing wrong with lazy

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Nice work Simon, looks good, like the framing

Mike

[Atmos (Colin)]

Shooting at F/4 helps with the shorter integration times

[Slawomir (Suavi)]

10" fast Newtonian - yum!

Nice image Simon

[gregbradley]

That looks great Simon. Interesting how the A7s is showing the thicker cloud of dust as black. Lots of the fainter dust is showing up nicely. No sign of the dreaded Sony "star eater algorithim" here. Do you know what version firmware you are using? Is this a modded cam? Boy that camera must be sensitive to get that much showing in just 46 minutes.

A touch of excess green here and there throwing some colour balance off a bit. Airglow is often green. I use HLVG free Photoshop plug in to get rid of excess green, it works really well.

Greg.

[RickS (Rick)]

Looks like it's on fire, Simon

[SimmoW (SIMON)]

Thanks folks, yes the focal ratio is helping heaps here. I need to check what pixinsight says the optimum exposures are, I did some experiments quickly at Heathcote and couldn't justify going over the 2 mins subjectively.

Not sure wot you are getting at Rick, what, too much Sat?

Greg, I might have made the dust look blacker than needed, was trying to maximise the dramatic feel. With more data I might have revealed more detail. Lord knows my crap guiding right now did a good job of smearing it!

Camera is a very early A7s, probably a rare astro collectors item now! They will pry the original firmware from my cold, dead hands. Yes it's modded per my sig. And I used PI's own green removal tool multiple times. Always need to keep repeatedly using it after colour adjustments.

[cometcatcher (Kevin)]

That is so sharp and clear Simon. Love it.

[RickS (Rick)]

Originally Posted by SimmoW

Not sure wot you are getting at Rick, what, too much Sat?

Just that the dark dust and the orientation makes it look like there's smoke coming out the top

[Placidus (Mike and Trish)]

A very nice field. We like the way you've distinguished between the jet-black super-thick rift of dust (Rick's smoke) heading off toward top left, and the larger, less defined, gently illuminated torus of dusty material.

[Paul Haese]

That's not bad for 46 minutes Simon. I really like this composition too.

[Octane (Humayun)]

I dig it! Looks great, considering the short integration time.

H

[Andy01 (Andy)]

As mentioned elsewhere - this is a damn fine image!
Keep it up with this Sony Simmo, turns out brilliant images in no time at all