A few southern galaxies...

[Peter Ward]

While going through the process of "squaring on" my STX, I decided to point the scope at a random galaxy and take a few subs.

Thin cloud and a half moon, so no colour.

The resulting image caught just a few more faint fuzzies than planned !

....displayed below at full-res and uncropped.... (O.K.... I did crop the bottom few rows due a small registration error)

It's big! Around 3meg.

I hope you enjoy looking at the galaxy zoo

The link is here

[allan gould]

Peter
That really shines! What an awesome machine for doing Sn patrols on galaxy clusters.

[Peter Ward]

Originally Posted by allan gould

Peter
That really shines! What an awesome machine for doing Sn patrols on galaxy clusters.

Thanks Alan. I gave up counting after around 60 galaxies....

I have to say it's inspired me to do my own "Hubble deep field" around the next new moon

[allan gould]

Peter that would be impressive and I will look forward to it eagerly.

[PeterM]

A smorgasbord from my point of view. Sensational work!
PeterM.

[Martin Pugh]

That scope rocks Peter

Question: What focus mechanism does this scope come with, or are you using a third party solution?

If its the native focusser, it seems to be quite solid (no sag evident?).

cheers
Martin

[gregbradley]

Fantastic performance.

Roland has created a masterpiece there.

Greg.

[Peter Ward]

Originally Posted by Martin Pugh

That scope rocks Peter

Question: What focus mechanism does this scope come with, or are you using a third party solution?

If its the native focusser, it seems to be quite solid (no sag evident?).

cheers
Martin

Thanks Martin.

It's the standard AP 3.5" focuser the 'scope came with.

It shares the same 10:1 feather-touch worm as AP 4" drawtubes.

I've not noticed any sag, but the focal plane needs to orthogonal within 5 micron...hence the application of a little shim stock.

For convenience, I will be installing the feather-touch electronic focus motor. The standard focuser has been designed to be unbolted completely to make way for third party units if required.

[RobF (Rob)]

Just amazing. Can't wait to see the images that follow "sea trials".

[Peter Ward]

Originally Posted by gregbradley

Fantastic performance.

Roland has created a masterpiece there.

Greg.

Ta Greg... In some ways it is a little too good. The field correction is so perfect that even the slightest camera tilt can become glaringly evident.

On the upside, guide stars some 65mm off axis are as tight as... and perfectly circular.

To date I've never struggled to find suitable (guide) candidate even in NB. The STX really purrs with this scope.

[alpal]

There must be 100's of galaxies in that photo.
One of them even looks like a more distant version of the Sombrero.

What an amazing picture.

[Peter Ward]

Originally Posted by alpal

There must be 100's of galaxies in that photo.
One of them even looks like a more distant version of the Sombrero.

What an amazing picture.

Thanks. Best guess is about 300+.

I linked the image to SkyX and there were quite a few "fuzzies" in the image not listed in the PGC catalog.

As Carl Sagan liked to say: billions and billions....

[bert (Brett)]

My iPad hates you.

Nice blue box!

[gregbradley]

Originally Posted by Peter Ward

Ta Greg... In some ways it is a little too good. The field correction is so perfect that even the slightest camera tilt can become glaringly evident.

On the upside, guide stars some 65mm off axis are as tight as... and perfectly circular.

To date I've never struggled to find suitable (guide) candidate even in NB. The STX really purrs with this scope.

That's cool. With a MMOAG I notice guide stars are often a bit elongated being outside the scopes corrected field on the CDK.

Greg.

[marc4darkskies (Marcus)]

Way cool!

[alpal]

Originally Posted by Peter Ward

Thanks. Best guess is about 300+.

I linked the image to SkyX and there were quite a few "fuzzies" in the image not listed in the PGC catalog.

As Carl Sagan liked to say: billions and billions....

Perhaps 300.
You'd have to invert the picture & count the black areas.
You must be imaging well out beyond a billion light years?

[multiweb (Marc)]

Loads of faint fuzzies. Looking forward to the deep field. That's definitely the scope for it. Gotta put this beast in altitude eventually, NZ comes to mind.

[Paul Haese]

I would have said something like a thousand galaxies in that frame. Probably too much but imagine this under dark skies with a 10 minutes exposure and no moon.

Huge field of view, more data though for smoothness (yes I know this is a test ).

[SkyViking (Rolf)]

That's very cool! And it just shows there is interesting stuff no matter were the scope is pointed.

[RobF (Rob)]

I've had a friend nag me to do a "hubble-esque deep field" long exposure effort, but I'd never seriously contemplated with so much other stuff to do and so many clouds. Would be VERY interesting to see one from the RHA though