The Turbulent Tarantula

[EddieT (Eddie)]

Thanks Exsfo,
SBIG cameras are a constant U.S. retail price the world over which means the AU price changes daily. When I bought my ST10 two/three years ago it was just under $16k, yesterday it was just under $11k. If I hadn't got such good use out of it over the years, I would resent that !

They have a much larger range now than back then so you should go to their site (www.sbig.com) and check out what they have now. The ST10 was the top of the line when I bought it, now it's second to the ST11k, their new 11 megapixel beast that was just under $20k when I priced it last.

Ok, you can get up off the floor now

Reckon I would be stretching the bonds of friendship with "she who must be obeyed" if I spent that sort of money on a camera. But they certainly produce beautiful results.
I could imagine that camera "married to the Tak" hmmm tempting stuff.

[EddieT (Eddie)]

Ah yes. I was flying solo when I bought mine

The SBIG cameras are much more than just a camera though. They are bonafide extensible scientific instruments with several integrated addons available; spectrographs, filter wheels, tip-tilt mirror systems and more in the works. Their self-guiding system (dual-chip on-axis) is what makes them special.

[cometcatcher (Kevin)]

Beautiful image Eddie.

I have a mate with an Sbig ST10 XME I think it is and he's having fun with it too. The single shot colour cameras just don't have the detail and depth that the top of the range filtered mono cameras do.

I'm still waiting for something similar to come out for around 500 bux.

[gaa_ian (Ian)]

I wonder if the Meade "DSI Pro" will fill this niche
Not sure on the price, but I'm sure it is closer to 500bucks than the ST10

[JohnH]

Absolutely spectacular image - wonderful and scary for some reason as others have said....

You got me wondering - turbulent hmmm...now to an engineer this means turbulent as opposed to laminar flow, this would in turn mean the gas has to be in motion at a particular speed...so I started to think about it and realised my thoughts were off beam - the motion is driven by the ionisation pressure vs gravitational forces for example, density is not constant, dust is present as well as gas. Time to hit the net, in doing that I found this paper on planetary nebulae which would seem simpler to model and, of course, these are popular viewing for us and I found the ability of the theorists to model their beautiful and complex shapes as stunning as the images....enjoy:

http://www.europhysicsnews.com/full/.../article3.html

[EddieT (Eddie)]

Thanks Kevin, one day you might be able to get an ST10 for $500, but i don't see it in the immediate future!

The main difference in price between consumer digital cameras and astronomical cameras and even between the same model of camera is the cost of the chip. CCD chips are graded by the number and type of defects in each individual chip. A class 0 chip is "scientific" grade with the least number of defects. These occur least often in the manufacturing process and therefore cost the most. I don't think SBIG even offer a class 0 chip as it's not on their price list, but they might if asked.

The price difference between a class 1 and class 2 chip is significant. Class 2 is the standard chip you get if you buy a camera without specifying the chip grade. Last time I checked most Kodak chips went from class 0 to 3 and one lower "Engineering" grade was available for development purposes. A class 2 KAF3200 (in the ST10) was over $7k just for the chip and a class 1 upgrade was about an extra $4k! So I hate to think what class 0 would cost.

Generally, chips made for consumer digital cameras are not graded and don't have to pass the stringent grading criteria.

That's why there's such a huge price difference!

[EddieT (Eddie)]

Ha! thanks John, I have to admit I didn't give the title as much thought as you. I just picked an adjective that described what it looked like.

But I suppose the dictionary definition "Violently agitated or disturbed" would apply.

Thanks for the link. It's very interesting!

[h0ughy (David)]

It is completely unfair that everytimeyou post you continue to surpass all the other images you have posted. Absolutely amazing shots. What in the way of the alchemy set will you be taking to duckadang this year?

[EddieT (Eddie)]

Thanks Houghy, it's not unfair really, just the result of time, effort and money

As I have every year for the last six years, I will be taking the whole shebang! I pack up the entire observatory (except the shed itself) and setup base camp away from the rest of the guys so as not to disturb them too much with my disregard for total darkness...