My first Helix - Widefield in Ha - Page 3

multiweb (Marc) · #41 20-10-2009, 11:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AlexN

**Alex can not type right now... He's too busy sulking in the corner of a darkened room...

C'mon, get an Hyperstar...it's calling you.

AlexN · #42 20-10-2009, 11:33 PM

need an SCT first!

It will happen though...

As I mentioned earlier though, I think I'll look for a celestron or meade fork mounted scope, get a wedge and have a setup that can track through the meridian.. do all night images with the hyperstar rig and do my usual thing with the TMB.... You are right though... its calling me... Loud and clear...

dpastern (Dave Pastern) · #43 20-10-2009, 11:33 PM

Marc is that M31 and M42 I hear calling?

Dave

multiweb (Marc) · #44 20-10-2009, 11:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AlexN

need an SCT first!

It will happen though...

As I mentioned earlier though, I think I'll look for a celestron or meade fork mounted scope, get a wedge and have a setup that can track through the meridian.. do all night images with the hyperstar rig and do my usual thing with the TMB.... You are right though... its calling me... Loud and clear...

Remember what you said on the helix 10x1min? I get more date in 6x30s than 10x10min. I just stacked 6 frames to check. I have over 80 of them though so I'll process that tomorrow. I'm sick of stacking now. I never though I'd say that

. Might go for a snooze and wait for M42 and the HH as David mentioned.

coldspace · #45 21-10-2009, 09:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DavidU

What would happen if a Melincam was put on a Hyperstar?The mind boggles.

David, I have seen C11 Hyperstar with Mallincam system and the images are just mindblowing, HH/flame in 7second intergration in full colour.
I would love a hyperstar but they don't attach to a Meade 12R. So Optec 3.3 will do for now its speed works really well for me ATM with the Mallincam. I can manually guide through the eagle,M42,Trifid in real time like looking through an eyepiece as the object moves around the screen in colour and clarity in 2 second mode.
These Hyperstar F2's work really well for large objects. Well worth it if you have a Celestron or one of the older Meades as they don't suit the ACF optics. If you have a small chip yo can also stack focal reducers to get to F2, like I know I a guy who uses an 6.3 reducer then a F4 reducer that Rock Mallin developed for the camera and this gets his F10 speed system done to about F2.5 which works well.

Matt.

AlexN · #46 21-10-2009, 09:32 AM

3 mins of data beats your previous 100 mins.. Sigh.. Its money spending time..

multiweb (Marc) · #47 21-10-2009, 10:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DavidU

He's all over it like a fat kid on a cup cake !

Waiting for an image ! I getting excited........

Yeah, pretty much David

Seriously it was a great first light. Lot of excitement. Now I have to do things "properly" In order collimate, guide then focus.

Initial first impressions:

Much easier to setup than I first thought. Weight is not an issue. You just have to be extremely careful with the system attached to the corrector and watch for those dangling cables.
Focus was also fairly easy to reach with the bathinov mask. Although I did experience a bit of mirror flop on M16 because it was low on the horizon. I suppose focus will not hold on low targets, but that's an SCT issue, not a HS issue. Best shoot right up. Because subs are so short you can shoot 100s at the meridian crossing. No need to chase a target for very long. I mean how many subs do you want to shoot? You have to process them all afterwards...
Light gathering capacity is mind blowing. Coming from a smallish 5" scope it makes a huge difference to me. 11" aperture at F/1.8 is a killer. Proof is in the pudding. The FOV is also much wider than what I though. I must have got my image scale calculations wrong.
I didn't dew up the corrector plate and had no heater going on at all last night. I'm not sure why but I think it might be because of the air circulation caused by the camera fan inside the dew shield. I also had the cooling fan running inside the scope while imaging and the focuser hole was unplugged. On another note why are insects always attracted to warm dark places. I had a moth making a trip through the fan last night. Bits and pieces through the corrector. So I had to make two set of flats. "pre moth" and "post moth".
The really attractive part is the integration time of the subs. We're talking about imaging like shooting bias frames. You litterally have 100s of subs to pick from so a big HD is a must.
If you have a camera that requires dark frames to overcome readout noise, then taking darks is not an issue anymore, because you have such short subs to start with, so no big deal shooting 100 darks to match exposure times.
Cables and squareness of the QHY8 did not seem to create diffraction spikes or major problems with star shapes. Although as anticipated I did see the ghost images with the cables on the corrector in the green and blue channels of the bayer matrix. On the C11 the obstruction is minimal though. It might be more pronounced on smaller aperture scopes. Again this was Ha. RGB might prove to be more challenging with reflections and other things.

All in one it was a real buzz to use. Love it. I'd recommend anyone who's got an SCT to seriously think about it. It is so easy to use and collect data.

DavidU (Dave) · #48 21-10-2009, 10:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by multiweb

On another note why are insects always attracted to warm dark places. I had a moth making a trip through the fan last night. Bits and pieces through the corrector. So I had to make two set of flats. "pre moth" and "post moth".

You should make a fan filter out of a 3M green dishwashing scrubber.They filter dust as well.

multiweb (Marc) · #49 21-10-2009, 10:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DavidU

You should make a fan filter out of a 3M green dishwashing scrubber.They filter dust as well.

That's a good idea... I was thinking about a porous foam but couldn't figure out what to use. You're talking about the green backing of standard sponges right?

DavidU (Dave) · #50 21-10-2009, 11:31 AM

Yeh,just the green pot scrubber without the foam

Quote:

Originally Posted by multiweb

That's a good idea... I was thinking about a porous foam but couldn't figure out what to use. You're talking about the green backing of standard sponges right?

multiweb (Marc) · #51 21-10-2009, 11:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DavidU

Yeh,just the green pot scrubber without the foam

Excellent! Got you - thanks.