Well it finally happened, after 4 days of cloudy nights, the clouds broke and blew away last night and I lugged R2 out to the back near the pool and was astounded at the brightness and resolution of everything
After an hour or so of visual observing I noticed Saturn had cleared the rooftops and I thought I might try some Juggling Photography on the new dob!
I could even see the moons of Saturn! One of them I even "tracked" for about 10 mins thinking it was Saturn and THEN realised it was Titan!
So.... here it is, the first light for the new scope, I hope you like it. Comments are welcome.
Details:
Scope: 305cm Skywatcher Flex Dob, FL = 1500mm
Camera: Philips Toucam Pro II @ Prime Focus
Magnification: 2.5x APO GSO Barlow
Frames: 222 stacked in Registax from 30 secs captured at 30 fps
Time: 15:02 UTC (2:02am AEST)
Processing: LE deconvolution and Wavelets applied in Astra Image Pro
I have a few more jumpy ones and others smoothly transiting the camera diagonal that I am going to process so there may be more coming. I am not too sure about the final image as its been a while and I am a bit out of practice, so apologies if its too much or if I have overcooked it in the processing. Also, collimation is not exactly spot on, so I am looking into sorting this out, and a few dust bunnies on the camera CCD sensor meant I had to drop a few frames off each pass, still, it was my first time....
Thanks for looking.
Cheers
Chris
Last edited by Screwdriverone; 28-01-2009 at 05:21 PM.
I AM quite pleased with that one, I think it turned out pretty good considering, had a bugger of a time getting the Dob to nudge-nudge-nudge in sync with the earth spinning at such high magnification. Certainly takes some practice.
But I am loving the new toy. Clear night tonight also! Yeeehaaaah!
I am pretty happy with the scope at the moment, although my back isnt, never knew there was so much bending involved. May have to make up a platform for it to sit on and bring it up higher....
Thanks for the kind words. I was surprised as to how much better it is compared to the previous ones with the "blur-a-scope"
Hi Chris,
Very nice image, love the colour and the detail in it would suggest that there is very little wrong with your collimation. Collimation is obviously critical at very high mags and any problem with it will smear the fine detail in images such as this.
I would suggest the temperature of your primary mirror and the quality of the seeing will be the most important thing that will contribute to any improvement on this image.
Very well done.
Wow Trevor, thanks a lot for those comments, I am in awe at yours and Mike's pics and it means a lot to hear such praise from such great planetary and deep sky imagers such as you and the others here on IIS.
Awesome news about the new scope (that Im sure you've mentioned earlier, however I've missed it till now!)
Fantastic shot, I think this image shows that it wasnt you causing problems in your earlier imaging attempts, but the affects of a small scope at high powers.. You've taken yourself a ripper Saturn image Chris, And Im sure there is many more to come! Congrats on the image, and the new toy!
Awesome news about the new scope (that Im sure you've mentioned earlier, however I've missed it till now!)
Fantastic shot, I think this image shows that it wasnt you causing problems in your earlier imaging attempts, but the affects of a small scope at high powers.. You've taken yourself a ripper Saturn image Chris, And Im sure there is many more to come! Congrats on the image, and the new toy!
Alex.
Thanks Alex,
Yes, I think every IIS'er wants at LEAST 12 inches to play with, , I cant believe just how much of a difference it makes, I DO notice the coma though, being F5 compared to my F7.7 blurtube, which in itself is still proving itself last night for things like globulars and nebulae, dont think I will chuck it out just yet. Most of the coma is probably caused by the cheapo eyepieces I have too. May have to shoot up to Linden tonight and BORROW a Televue Ethos to compare
It sure helped a lot when I had a head start by following your "adventures" with the 8 inch dob and how to line up a planet for an avi pass, so thanks for all that info, it made a lot of difference and saved me a LOT of time
I must admit I was surprised myself when I started processing and things just kept getting better as I went, and I tweaked the gamma and the RGB curves with images of Trevor and Mike's in my head so I could sort of match what I thought the "real" colours are. After some tricks I learned here, I sat back and thought....no way, my webcam cant take shots like THAT!
So all in all, its been a bit of a team effort, a little bit from Column A (me and the scope) and a LOT from Column B (IIS members and all their experience).
I have been loving this High pressure system of the last week, clear nights with little or no jet stream at all and I have had R2 out the back almost every night.
I am a bit worried to do another run on Saturn, I feel I might have peaked too early?
Thanks again for the comments, and to everyone for all the reference materials.
What a great first light image its spot on.
I,m interested in astrophotography through dobs only because it highlights collimation and your image is so crisp....Hats off to the image and the collimation....cheers Kev.
Glad someone put all that babble I wrote down to work mate! And im sure you can get more out of it! so keep at it!
That shot of yours beats my only attempt at saturn so far this year! So hats off to you good friend!
Hi Alex,
Ha ha, not babble, I read all of it (all right, most.......OK, SOME!) Cant wait now for Joop in Winter, that will be interesting....
Cheers and thanks
Chris
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kevnool
What a great first light image its spot on.
I,m interested in astrophotography through dobs only because it highlights collimation and your image is so crisp....Hats off to the image and the collimation....cheers Kev.
Thanks Kev, must have been the dodgy eyepiece I had in before I whacked in the camera, otherwise it could have been a bit of false colour from the cheapish barlow on the PC screen which was fixed by the RGB align of Registax perhaps....?
First Light - SWFLEX12 Dob - Saturn 28/01/09
on the new dob! 
