I'm a numbers kinda guy. I'm interested in spectra and redshift. The only filters I own are UBVR and I.
Alas, I have the artistic ability of a brick
The other night I was out measuring distances and angles, emissions and absorption, and while PHD2 was busy doing its thing I was looking through this forum.
Its amazing what is out there, and how inspiring the images are that the contributors to this forum make. I looked at Paul's Helix Nebula, did a quick bit of mental arithmetic, and thought "why the hell not???" NGC-7293 was directly overhead.
This is my first astrophoto, not counting the stuff I did as a kid years ago. It’s a little hot at 56k in places and probably needs some contrast, but I don’t much care…
The scope is a 14" f8 BINTEL RC which replaced the trusty C14 I accidently destroyed a couple of months ago. My ancient ST-8XME took 25 integrations of 300sec. The image is uncropped and stacked in Deep Sky Stacker. PHD2 was running at 0.5 arcsec / 4sec on an AP1200.
What a view. I would love to see what you could do with your setup on small faint galaxies. I can understand your pursuit of spectra though. Quite an interesting field.
Welcome to iceinspace bob. Can't wait to see more contributions from you.
I was pretty pleased with the distant galaxies, and especially the resolution of the RC14. I think I have a lot of learning to do though.
As for the C14, I was messing with the optical and physical alignment and had just taken the scope down from the mount, I clearly hadn't placed it carefully enough, I lost concentration and it just toppled over. Busted corrector plate, then the mirror was covered in glass...
I'll be working on some faint fuzzies over the next few weeks, assuming the cloud ever clears.
