Mars, Plato, Copernicus w/JMI NGT 12.5

[John K]

My repost from cloudynights for fellow OZ astronomers:
Below are links to photos of Mars, Copernicus and Plato with a new JMI NGT12.5. The scope has a custom f/5 Torus Optics mirror (PV .13, RMS .017, Strehl 0.99) and a Protostar Diagonal (PV 0.070, RMS 0.013). Using a NexImage camera and 5 x Powermate.

Being absolutely totally new to imaging with 2 weeks under my belt, Registax is driving me (rather than me it!) and I am only doing very basic things on Photoshop 7 (unsharp masking and gaussian blurring).

The biggest problem at the moment is the atrocious seeing conditions at my site (2-3/10), and although I cannot even imagine matching some of the amazing photos by people on the cloudy nights forum, the image scale I am getting is giving me encouragement. Plato and Copernicus were just able to fit on my 15.4" laptop screen! All shots are at the scale taken and have not been resized.

Comments & advice welcome!

MARS SEPT 12
http://www-us.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=43419206&context= set-950542&size=o

MARS SEPT 4
http://www-us.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=43419185&context= set-950542&size=o

PLATO
http://www-us.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=43490149&size=o

COPERNICUS
http://www-us.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=43490148&size=o

[mick pinner]

where abouts in Melbourne are you John.

[asimov (John)]

Nice images, & welcome.

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

Pretty damn good for 2 weeks John. and

[davidpretorius]

when we are picking sides at star camp, i want to be on John's side!

lovely work, yes we will let you in to our little club, you work just cuts the grade!

pssst , can you give me a lot of lessons at star camp?????

[ving (David)]

KA-BANG!
what an entry!
welcome to the forum

[atalas]

Mr K ! some nice detail there John and you weren't jocking about image scale were you .


Louie

[netwolf]

Wow.. John, is that the Split-ring platform newtonian you have from JMI. I wish i could afford one of those. A Newtonian with tracking thats what i call a scope.. and those pics are a remarkable effort.

[John K]

Thanks for the comments. I'm located in Brunswick, which sounds quite bad for astronomy stuff, but having seen some of the amazing images by guys like Eric Ng in the heart of Hong Kong things could be worse!

Yep, the scope is on a horseshoe mount and I spent the extra cash to get a motorfocus and a digital read out unit on the focuser. I have a wheeley bar and 2 large wheels attached to is so I simply roll it outside on my second storey sun deck for observing. Being in an open truss arrangement, I find that the scope seems to cool reasonably quickly, but I point a large fan at it for 30-45 mins as well if need be and leave it outside under a tarp to observe in the early morning hours.

Are most people processing their images in Registax with the wavelets module, or are they doing these adjustments in Photoshop? If so, what are are the advantages of doing that?

[davidpretorius]

mike (iceman) is a master of the wavelets in registax for planetary stuff.