As most found, there was a brief window of opportunity last night, and while I just wanted to "stare upwards" I also caranked up the G-11, the Mewlon 180, and the Nikon D100, on the pier. While all this was cooking ( normally 3 min exposures) I did some hopping (Palm DSC) with the 10" newt on the dob base a few metres away, and with a friend and his 16" newt.
Tarantula attached is 5 separate 3 minute exposures, with the Mewlon 180 (2160mm focal length), and a Mogg .5x reducer. ISO 1000, and the N/R filter on (in camera).
Stacked in Photoshop, and a small amount of levels tweaking.
Good to just get out.
Gary
Nice Shot Gary.. Hi again!
My first post to this forum. Good stuff here!!
Iceman... In reply to your "lack of Red" comment...
Those of us that use DSLR's suffer from a reduced Red sensitivity, due to a Ha filter in front of the imaging chip. In some instances the lack of Red is great at picking up additonal "blue-end" detail. M20 is a classic example of this (see my website http://www.2fdesign.co.nz/astronomy/nebulas.htm ).
Also I have a shot of M42 with film vs. DSLR.
Hey stupid question, but if the red isn't coming through as much as the other colours, why not make an RGB composite and just expose the red channel a bit longer?
Good one Gary, looks good with the focal reduction too. Really impressive, much better than the crap I have been offering up. Real pleasure to see some more of your work.
Hi Loopy,
Yes, you could do this. The only problem, is that because of the Ha filter, you would have to expose much much longer, and the pixel noise would get too great. With DSLR's I find the maximum exposure is about 5mins at ISO800. Although it is very much determined by ambient temperature.
It's probably worth a try on something bright like M42 though!
Maybe I'll try next time. We have had so much cloud lately that I haven't been out in ages!
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Keep'em Coming.
