Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: CptTrips on July 26, 2009, 11:31:20 AM
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A simple piggy-back shot last night. Cygnus area in the Milkyway. Includes the North American Nebula. 75mm Lens Canon XTi
http://jasonirby.net/bitbucket/astro/NA_Nebula.jpg (http://jasonirby.net/bitbucket/astro/NA_Nebula.jpg)
Jupiter and Io 12" Meade LX200 Skynyx 2-0c camera
http://jasonirby.net/bitbucket/JupiterIo03Jul09_440am.png (http://jasonirby.net/bitbucket/JupiterIo03Jul09_440am.png)
The Eagle Nebula Televue102mm Canon XTi
http://jasonirby.net/bitbucket/m16.png (http://jasonirby.net/bitbucket/m16.png)
Still watching for that Stephenville UFO. ;)
Clear Skies,
Wab
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Nice pics! :aok
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Nice pic on the Horse Head Nebula there. I like! :D
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That eagle nebula shot is excellent (I may have to steal it if thats ok).
Wurzel
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Very nice as always. The question is... what are you using to track? what mount? :pray
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Nice. Ever caught Titan?
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Few questions:
What is the exposure time/focal?
Do you use an auto-guider or manual guide through the scope?
Instead of piggyback do you use a camera mount for through-the-lens shots also?
I used to do a lot of astrophotography when I used film. Haven't a CCD setup yet. Getting ready to do some test shots with my Kodak Digital here pretty soon. Planning on using my 6" refractor.
Awesome shots by the way. I noticed your NA Nebula shot is somewhat "dim"...is this because of the limitation of your cameras exposure setting?
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Beautiful
Thanks again Wab.
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Absolutely fantastic.
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Very nice as always. The question is... what are you using to track? what mount? :pray
Thanks Tac.
The NA Nebula shot was a Canon camera body with 75mm lens sorta duct taped (Well not actually duct tape but definitly "rigged") onto a Meade LXD75 mount as an experiment. The mount was roughly polar aligned and tracking, but not guided.
The Jupiter shot was thru my MEade 12" LX200 driven on its fork mount on a permenent pier.
The Eagle Nebula shot was thru a 102mm Televue refractor piggy -backed on top of the meade 12" while guiding through the 12".
You can see my setup here: http://jasonirby.net/Astronomy/Observatory/phase3/pages/DSC00725.htm (http://jasonirby.net/Astronomy/Observatory/phase3/pages/DSC00725.htm)
Clear Skies,
Wab
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Nice. Ever caught Titan?
Moot,
Thanks. I don't think I have. I usually use a pretty small frame size to maximize the fps, so often it isn't large enough to include the moons unless they just happen to be near the limb.
Wab
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Few questions:
What is the exposure time/focal?
Do you use an auto-guider or manual guide through the scope?
Instead of piggyback do you use a camera mount for through-the-lens shots also?
I used to do a lot of astrophotography when I used film. Haven't a CCD setup yet. Getting ready to do some test shots with my Kodak Digital here pretty soon. Planning on using my 6" refractor.
Awesome shots by the way. I noticed your NA Nebula shot is somewhat "dim"...is this because of the limitation of your cameras exposure setting?
The NA Nebula was 86 x 1 min exposures at ISO 800 stacked. Canon XTi 75mm fl lens. Tracking, but unguided. Piggy-backed on a LXD75 mount.
The Jupiter was best 1000 out of 5000 frames stacked. 28 fps. Skynyx 2-0c color planetary camera. 12" Meade LX200 with 2.5x TV Powermate (effective fl ~7600mm ).
The Eagle Nebula was 12 x 5 min exposures ISO 800 stacked. Canon XTi straight thru 102mm TV w/focal reducer. I can't remember the fl bu I get about a 3 degree field of view. During exposure, auto-guiding was thru the 12" with Skynyx 2-01m and K3ccd software.
Yeah, I would have liked to pull more depth out of the NA nebula, but I think that was a factor of using such short sub exposures (1 min). I wasn't sure of how accurately that little LXD75 mount would track or how good my quick polar alignment was. Next time I will take a series of test shots to see how long of a sub exposure I can get away with.
Regards,
Wab
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What about Ganymede? Does it show up as more than a dot?
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What about Ganymede? Does it show up as more than a dot?
I think I've caught Ganymede before. In mine it shows its a disk instead of a point, but no real features. I haven't mastered Jupiter imaging as well as some out there. Really, I'm just a beginner.
Damian Peach is one of the worlds top amatuer imagers. He periodically travels to Barbados to image because of the seeing conditions. His is about the best I've seen: http://damianpeach.com/barbados07/jupiter/2007_05_26_gany.jpg (http://damianpeach.com/barbados07/jupiter/2007_05_26_gany.jpg)
Wab
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Wow! That's crazy :D
Thanks..
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AKWabbit....The Televue is an APO? or ED version? I do not have a APO scope, however I do have color planetary corrective filters for my 6" achromatic lenses for truer colors and too eliminate the halo affect of the moon. I have had great success using a polarizer filter through my 6" SCT at a tad bit shorter focal length and longer exposure time.
I was wondering if you could write down your exposure formulas for the certain objects you have captured, I could use a better guideline to experiment with later on....I have to literally re-learn everything since I do not use film anymore. I am in the market for a decent CCD camera that won't break the bank. I was hoping the CCD process would have gone down some by now in cost. I do have a monochrome CCD for moon and planets with color filters using the RGB method of stacking. It works, but tedious. And not altogether great for even the more brighter deep sky objects such as Orion or even Andromeda Galaxy, Did pretty will on M13 Glob cluster or the Double Cluster in Cassiopeia.... :confused:
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Yep, its an APO. For only 4" of glass it can really kick some butt. With the focal reducer it gives an amazing field of view and its TACK SHARP.
I don't really have any formulas. I do my deep sky imaging with a consumer grade Canon XTi that has been modified to remove the IR filter to make it more sensative to red light. (I used to get good results with a Canon 10d that was unmodified too.) I haven't use the new camera like the Deep Sky Pro etc but I hear good things. On my camera, I look at the histogram of a test exposure. If I have the sky-hump separated off the left edge I just gather as many sub-frames as I can and stack them. Here is a good discussion: http://www.samirkharusi.net/sub-exposures.html (http://www.samirkharusi.net/sub-exposures.html).
But really its even simpler than that. For the most part I just do 5 min exposures and get as many sub-frames as possible (as well as a set of dark frames to calibrate). The exception would be something like M42 or M13 if I think 5 min subs would over saturate the cores. If I go past 5 min, I start to get some amp glow showing up in my frame so I just don't bother going longer, I just take more sub-frames.
When I used to use the 10d I didn't have guiding capability so I kept sub-frames to 1 min and used to get some pretty descent images even at that.
Planetary stuff is an entirely different discussion. ;)
Wab