First Light GSO RC10

cventer · #1 22-10-2011, 12:38 AM

This image is a few firsts

First light on my GSO RC10 I have had in a box for nearly 15 months that I never opened.

First image using my Paramount MX

First time processed in CCD Stack

Image taken from Glen Iris Melbourne

Camera QHY10 (OSC)
23 x 8 min Subs
Callibrated aligned and Stacked in CCD Stack
Final Tweaks in photoshop

I think my focus was a little soft based on the diffraction spikes, but pretty happy with what the GSO RC10 could pull out of my very light polluted neighbourhood. Image is cropped a fair bit as well. Will post full frame if anyone interested.

Thanks for looking

RickS (Rick) · #2 22-10-2011, 01:50 AM

Great stuff! The RC10 is a very capable scope.

Cheers,
Rick.

Alchemy (Clive) · #3 22-10-2011, 06:30 AM

New scopes and mount too, the last few decent nights must have seemed like heaven...... Well it's over now back to Melbourne weather .....

Marvelous detail for an inner suburban setup, you would normally see about 10 stars down there. You must be using some form of light pollution filter ?

cventer · #4 22-10-2011, 10:36 AM

No LP filter. I tried using an LDAS one for a while but felt it impacted stars too much so started to not use it and process out light pollution rather.

On certain objects I would still use it.

I forgot to mention I also use the AP.67 reducer/flatenner to get this down to about F6.2

gregbradley · #5 22-10-2011, 12:05 PM

Hey that's great Chris. Nice tight stars.

Greg.

cventer · #6 22-10-2011, 12:25 PM

Thanks Greg

I am actualy not happy with stars. I used nearest neighbour for registration and it seemed to impact the sharpness a bit and makes them look a little blocky. A single sub seems to have much nicer and rounder stars so I may just blend in a combination of a few subs of stars some time.

Big learning curve with CCD Stack. I followed Adams Blocks videos which I highly reccomend. I love this program now that I am familiar with it after spending several hours playing.

I effectively just treated this like LRGB and broke each of the colors from the OSC file into their own RGB files then created synthetic luminance.

I find it easier to process this way than trying to process a single color image.

Moon (James) · #7 22-10-2011, 05:28 PM

Quote:

GSO RC10 I have had in a box for nearly 15 months that I never opened.

That might be some sort of record.
Great result - congratulations.

James

peter_4059 (Peter) · #8 22-10-2011, 05:37 PM

Nice shot. You'd have to be happy with that for a first light.

Ross G · #9 22-10-2011, 06:50 PM

Hi,

What a great "first" shot.

Many amazing photos to follow I hope.

Thanks.

Ross.

Paul Haese · #10 22-10-2011, 11:21 PM

Nice going Chris. The scope looks to have produced a lovely image.

Edit, meaning the image is quite sharp and well detailed. Your processing made the remaining difference of course.

allan gould · #11 23-10-2011, 12:25 AM

Nice shot Chris. Have just purchased the same scope and the target was the same for first light. I've just ordered a moonlight focuser for mine as I wanted the electric focus that I have on my other scopes. Also thinking of getting the qhy10 after speaking to Theo.
Copy cat????
Allan

cventer · #12 23-10-2011, 09:03 AM

Allan,

Seems to be decent scope. My collimation is still a bit off as per CCD Inspector. Moonlight will be a nice addition. I have a feathertouch 3.5 inch on mine with Robofocus. Seems like a solid imaging train but the QHY10 is not a real test as its pretty light.

QHy10 seems like a realy good OSC camera. Very low Dark noise. Very low readout noise. Measured mine at 6.9 e-. gets down to -30 with ease. Its a pretty decent size chip so will show any opitc issues very quickly.

As you can see with my CCDInspector attachement. The uncropped image has a lot more curvature.

I think the camera would be very well suited to a dark sky. I will be going back to Mono soon with LRGB, HA etc.... as I believe reesults better from light polluted suburb like mine. Guess we will find out.

I am new to ccd inspector. What kind of collimation numbers are reasonable to aim for ?

peeb61 (Paul) · #13 23-10-2011, 10:40 AM

Nice first light Chris,
Along time coming with that scope but now it's done and time to push the boundary's if you dare!

Paul

gregbradley · #14 23-10-2011, 01:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cventer

Thanks Greg

I am actualy not happy with stars. I used nearest neighbour for registration and it seemed to impact the sharpness a bit and makes them look a little blocky. A single sub seems to have much nicer and rounder stars so I may just blend in a combination of a few subs of stars some time.

Big learning curve with CCD Stack. I followed Adams Blocks videos which I highly reccomend. I love this program now that I am familiar with it after spending several hours playing.

I effectively just treated this like LRGB and broke each of the colors from the OSC file into their own RGB files then created synthetic luminance.

I find it easier to process this way than trying to process a single color image.

2x2 binning will make stars rounder but of course costs resolution and gives fatter stars.

Squarish stars with mirrored scopes comes from the secondary vanes being thick. I have seen that with Tak BRC250 to some degree.

As you say different interpolation methods may get different results.
CCDStack 2 has quite a few interpolation methods now.

Collimation will affect star shapes as well so perhaps some of that in there too? You see it in your 1x1 downloads better than we would in a final image.

Greg.

iceman (Mike) · #15 24-10-2011, 06:23 AM

Nice one Chris, looks great for a first light!

multiweb (Marc) · #16 24-10-2011, 05:41 PM

Great sharp shot with heaps of details. Well done.