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Image Gallery -
( being repopulated as I rebuild the site )
2005
14
April M64
Equipment
:
Celestron
NexStar 5i Equatorial Mode,
MX916 CCD camera w/NexStar 5i's OTA (5" SCT) at F6.3
2004
6
October M27, M81 and M82
Equipment
:
Celestron
AS-GT,
MX916 CCD camera with my NexStar 5i's OTA (5" SCT) at F6.3
More
self-guiding. I will admit that amp glow from self-guiding is a
drag and also that guiding means that hot pixels stay in one place
so if a hot happens to be in a bright area, the dark puts a dark
spot where you don't want it. So there is something said for the
dithering effect of not guiding. (And no, I'm not using Maxim 4
which does dithering while guiding as the SX drivers are still out
to lunch from what I am reading.)
1
October M31, M52 and Polaris
Equipment
:
Celestron
AS-GT,
MX916 CCD camera with my NexStar 5i's OTA (5" SCT) at F6.3
Self-guiding
is an adventure!
9
September Wide Field Images
M31, North America Nebula, CR 399 (Coathanger), Polaris, Star Trails,
M27 (Dumbbell Nebula), Double Cluster, IC 1396 (Elephant Nebula)
Equipment
:
Celestron
AS-GT,
MX916 CCD camera with 50mm lens
Decided
to go the easy route. NexRemote, SNP3, Maxim DL/CCD. Did quick align
and then a realign on M31 (single star alignment, essentially) but
with such a wide FOV, it was fine. At 50mm F2, the limit is somewhere
between 5 and 10 minutes per exposure. 10 minutes smeared, but 5
was fine. Didn't explore in between as I saturated stars at 5 mins
anyway.
13,
14, 27 February M15, M53, M106, NGC 4565 and NGC 2903
Equipment
:
Celestron
NexStar 5i
F6.3 EQ Mode on Wedge MX916 CCD camera
Finally
got that new wedge! It is a lot easier to use. So now there are
other issues to address, primarily balance. There may or may not
be additional images added to this group. Depends if I can eek anything
out of them.
2003
28
December M31 Mosaic
Celestron
NexStar 5i
F6.3 EQ Mode on Wedge MX916 CCD camera
22
December Comet Linear C/2002 T7, M101, M36, M42, M46, M47, M50,
M65, M66, M67, M84, M86 and some NGCs which share the frame with Messier
objects
NexStar
5i
mount at F6.3 EQ with Starlight Xpress MX916 CCD
Another
night of quantity over quality but... it was also the first night
where I used remote control (see http://www.astrogeeks.com/ and
check out hcAnywhere) so I was inside and the scope was outside
all night. It was difficult to control myself so I hit a lot of
objects and couldn't seem to get myself to stick with one for very
long. I ran all night and didn't hit the base until after 5 AM,
and I'd have to guess it was due to my 7AH battery getting low,
giving me a runaway slew. M46 is pretty cool as there is a little
cheerio of the M57 ring nebula sort in it called NGC 2438. I'd like
to do more imaging in the Virgo cluster as having a bunch of galaxies
in a single field of view is pretty amazing. M101 -- well, I really
need to rework that one. It is pretty awful. It was nice to be inside
during the cold weather. But not running out to see the scope and
set up a new shot did make it a much less personal thing. It could
have been anyone's scope out there... you know, those rent-a-scope
situations. Part of the fun for me is messing with equipment. Remote
operation has been a dream for a long time. But now I know I can
do it (I set up a week later and it was pretty ho-hum to me) so
I have to think of what I'd like to do next. (1) Better wedge.(2)
Learn and take the time to do a closer polar alignment. (3) autoguiding
(4) learn to shoot at F10 (5) if it is possible stop hating planetary
imaging and learn to do it properly maybe (6) learn more about image
processing -- beyond histograms and curves (7) install a pier somewhere
15
November M33 and the Eastern and Western Veil
Short
Tube 80 on NexStar 5i
mount EQ with Starlight Xpress MX916 CCD
30,
31 October
M38 and M42
NexStar
5i F6.3 EQ
with Starlight Xpress MX916 CCD Camera
I
spent most of this night trying my hand at autoguiding the N5i.
The first thing I must note is that seeing was much better this
time than the last time I tried the N5i at F6.3 using the MX916.
I was actually gun shy because of the poor images I'd gotten last
time and didn't want to use the C5, prefering to stick with the
short tube 80 and its more forgiving nature. I only managed two
keeper images this night because of all of the playing with self-guiding
using Maxim DL/CCD and the MX916 with Star2000. And it was probably
stupid because it really was a nice evening. But I'm glad I've finally
gotten down to business and trying to figure out if I can guide
at all. The result was that I had gotten the scope to ping-pong
in RA giving me little snowmen stars. But here are the two unguided
images I captured. I oversharpened M42 as you can see graininess.
17
July
M3, M11, M13, M26, M27, M92
NexStar
5i F6.3
EQ with Starlight Xpress MX916 CCD Camera
Let's
see. Let's get the excuses out of the way. The sky was clear though
wispy clouds developed late. The Moon rose a little after 11 and
the sky was pretty bright. I put the C5 on Ray's Brackets somewhat
forward but maybe not enough to balance the Celestron 6.3 reducer/corrector,
flip mirror, 25mm silvertop plossl, 9x50 RA finder plus the Starlight
Xpress MX916 camera. While GOTO was great again finding everything
on the chip, the mount didn't track as well as it did the last time
out. I am not sure how evident it is in these processed images,
but on individual frames, the faintest stars show an almost packman
shape to them (circle with a piece missing) which suggests a funny
sort of wobble, even at only 60 seconds. Stacked frames can show
faint stars with a hole in the middle. The other problem was seeing.
When Mars rose it had these gorgeous diffraction spikes coming off
it which I guess indicates a "thick" atmosphere, for lack of a better
term. Arcturus twinkled madly. So despite my doing my best to get
good focus, the vast majority of my images were soft. I tried to
isolate the very best for stacking, but that didn't leave too many.
My stars are fat and the images are soft and overall, I'm not very
pleased. I need to address the balance issue right away. I need
to learn to judge seeing though I'm surprised the extent to which
it hurt me at F6.3 (ish -- with the flip mirror it is North of this,
but how much I do not know.) And as always, I need to take more
images regardless of the exposure but I have a problem doing that
since I'm still into quantity over quality. I need to get a bee
in my bonet over a particular object before I'm likely to follow
through. Or maybe I just have to take enough mediocre images to
get disgusted with myself or perhaps stop meeting with the approval
of my NexStar buddies so that I stop being lazy and start being
more serious. ;-) You guys are too easy on me!!! I took some nebula
images - M16 The Eagle, and M whatever the Crescent is, but I didn't
like them at all so I didn't bother. As it is, M27 is soft and does
not show much depth.
Note to myself : The big issue I have with the way I'm doing this
site is that the text should go on the thumbnail pages. However, if
I ever want to rebuild the thumbnails, I would have to readd the text
because I'm using a less than perfect tool (JASC PSP Photoalbum).
I suppose another option would be to split this frame and have the
thumbnails at the top and the description at the bottom (scrollable
of course). I'm not totally keen on that idea. Will have to think
on this.
24-25
June M3, M11, M31, 39, Double Cluster, M51, M57, M101, NGC 6888,
NGC 7082
Tasco
80 OTA (80mm, F5) on NexStar 5i
mount EQ with Starlight Xpress MX916
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