Friday 24/2/12 SVAA

[Nico13 (Ken)]

Well it was a great night Friday except for my two month old EQ6 mount RA drive stopping on a number of occasions and Stellarium continually crashing as well (was controlling the mount ) but in between all that I managed to get some reasonable shots in.
I have been trying to stack with DSS but for some reason (I'm new to stacking by the way) it keeps coming back with "Will only be using one frame for the stacking process" it discards the rest, hardly a stack wouldn't you say.
So have given up on that for the moment and decided to post some single frame images instead.
Hope you like them.

These were all shot with my std Pentax K5D and 135mm piggy back on the 8"SCT.
f2.8 @ f2.8 iso 800.
All shots raw processed in Capture One and finished in CS5
No in cam NR, all single frame images.

Antares and Rho Oph 515 seconds
M6 and M7 215 seconds
M8 and M20 115 seconds
Carina 120 seconds
The last shot is of a Galaxy field in Virgo, 150 seconds, obviously your not going to see them as I can without the benefit of a full size image but this was amazing when SVAA Ken said point your camera here and pointed to the spot on my screen, just to see what you get.
The amount of Galaxy's in that patch of sky is just amazing.

Ken.

[barx1963 (Malcolm)]

Nice work Ken! wouldn't bother with stacking with the results you have there, especially the Rho shot.
You were certainly busy!

Malcolm

[Nico13 (Ken)]

Originally Posted by barx1963

Nice work Ken! wouldn't bother with stacking with the results you have there, especially the Rho shot.
You were certainly busy!

Malcolm

Thanks Malcolm,
Appreciate the comments and thanks again for the use of the 34mm eye piece that was great.

Ken.

[ballaratdragons (Ken)]

Woo-Hoooo Ken, great set of images

Especially Virgo
Really good results

[barx1963 (Malcolm)]

No worries Ken, I usually seem to end up lending it out rather than using it. Lent it to Paul at the January club night, but now he wants a 31mm Nag!

[danielsun]

Great pis there Ken! Really love Rho Oph! I am really loving the wide fields lately and looking forward to testing out my new 18/250 lens at the camp. Great work.

Cheers Daniel.

[multiweb (Marc)]

Great shots. You've nailed the focus on those. Superb colors too.

[desler]

Very nicely presented Ken! Well done!

Darren

[Nico13 (Ken)]

Originally Posted by ballaratdragons

Woo-Hoooo Ken, great set of images

Especially Virgo
Really good results

Thanks Ken, yeh pretty happy with what I got, just gota sort out the stacking with DSS.

Originally Posted by danielsun

Great pis there Ken! Really love Rho Oph! I am really loving the wide fields lately and looking forward to testing out my new 18/250 lens at the camp. Great work.

Cheers Daniel.

Thanks Daniel,
The 135mm lens is a great little lens, not ED though which would be good. I put my 300mm on for a couple of shots but unfortunately it has a bad internal relection on any bright stars near the center of the frame, a real shame because its nice lens during daylight hours.

Originally Posted by multiweb

Great shots. You've nailed the focus on those. Superb colors too.

Yeh the focus with that lens is easy just wack it against the stop at infinity and you got it every time.
Thanks for the comments guys.

Ken.

[scagman (John)]

Very nice shots Ken. I had a quick count and got 15 galaxies in the last shot. As you say there is a lot.

Regards

[TrevorW]

Some nice images there, you are starting a collection

[ballaratdragons (Ken)]

Ken, here is your Galaxy count

There are about another 10 or so that may or may not be faint distant Galaxies, so I left them unmarked (the Jury is still out).

[Jen]

nice shots there Ken Cant wait to see some of your work when you get everything going right
Good to see some astronomy does get done at Snake Valley

[mill (Martin)]

Very nice set of images
And a very productive night

[Nico13 (Ken)]

Thanks everyone for the comments, very appreciative of them. I've been a mad keen photographer for a lot of years and this is a new challenge that I'm enjoying a whole lot.
Hey Ken what are you doing sitting there counting Galaxy's I new there was a lot there but you just boosted the numbers, thanks for that.

Ken.

[rcheshire (Rowland)]

Ken. That camera/lens combination is impressive. Very sharp, great detail and FOV.

[Ross G]

A great selection of photos Ken.


Ross.