Posts Made By: Anthony Ayiomamitis

Hey Rolando,

I was about to say "one photo, a thousand words" but that would not be doing justice to this incredible photo.

Any data surrounding the image such as subs (number and length) etc?

Anthony.

Roland Christen said:

Bubble nebula in Hubble palette. 12" Mak-Cass, STL11K. First set of exposures, 1hr each Ha, SII, OII. Needs more exposure time.

Rolando

Rolando,

That is a killer image! Can I trouble you to repost but with the CHFT palette?

Amazing detail and texture.

Anthony.

Floyd,

Pay some attention to your flats, for I see the same problem with your ST-2000XM which I also have and where one side of the chip is either too high or too low in its sensitivity with the rest of the chip.

Just to give you an idea with my ST-2000XM, it is about 1000 ADU too sensitive in the red on the left side, about 800 ADU too sensitive in the blue on the right side and about 800 ADU too sensitive in the green along the bottom side.

This is a neat galaxy and I like your result ... keep'em coming.

Anthony.

Eric,

Along with M81 and M51, this galaxy is amongst my favourites and you captured it very well. It is loaded with detail.

I hope you realize that M33 has approximately 60 (extragalactic) globular clusters discovered to-date and which you may wish to pursue. I hope this week to also tackle M33 with my AP160+AP reducer.

Keep'em coming.

Anthony.

Hey stranger,

Good to see you! This is a stunning image and which I hope to pursue very shortly as well. Galaxies often require lots of hours of total exposure time but you nailed this one beautifully with relatively little total time.

Anthony.

Tom,

This is absolutely stunning. Those ASA telescopes are producing some incredible images and thoughts are now running through my mind about getting one.

Thanks for posting.

Anthony.

Jason Boyce said:

I usually shoot shorter RGB frames to keep the gradients from light pollution under control but went long this time to see how bad it would be,it was pretty bad!

Jason,

If you want to see serious light pollution gradients, take a peek at my M33 from last year and which I purposely did not circulate due to the gradients and the poor response in the red from my ST-2000XM.

Low resolution at http://www.perseus.gr/Astro-DSO-NGC-0598.htm ....
Higher resolution at http://www.perseus.gr/Astro-DSO-NGC-0598b.htm ....

With an ST-10XME now in my hands, I will revisit this celestial gem very shortly and now with a slightly greater field of view (AP160 + AP 0.75x 27TVPH reducer).

I wish had your level of light pollution.

Anthony.

Jim,

Beautiful result .... this one IS a keeper!

Anthony.

Jason,

It is indeed M37 ... just do a vertical flip so as to get the proper orientation. Here is my result of the same cluster: http://www.perseus.gr/Astro-DSO-NGC-2099.htm

There is two other Messier clusters in Auriga as well (M36, M38).

Anthony.

Joe,

My situation was similar to yours. I have had my ST-2000XM for about five years now and it has been a mostly frustrating experience. As much as I like the antiblooming option, it has low sensitivity (especially in the red) and high noise (bias frames are over 1000 ADU).

The only reason I never managed to get satisfactory images of galaxies was the low QE and where my 10- and 15-minute histograms were quite poor.

Approximately six weeks ago my ST-10XME arrived and it was love at first sight. The camera really sucks in those photons; the bias frames are around 100 ADU and the darks are very clean with very low ADU counts; the TC-237 chip as opposed to the TC-211 I have on my ST-2000XM is a godsend; and the cooling is excellent (I am getting around 45 degrees below ambient).

The only problem is the blooming spikes. In studying some of my results, I notice that blooming begins around 52,000 ADU or thereabouts. There are a number of tools available for their removal including Ron Wodaski's BloomRemover, Maxim/DL and CCDStack. The blooms can be removed quite effectively but under special situations: if you have an open field (ex. open cluster), it is rather trivial to remove the spikes (occasionally you will also remove a smaller and dimmer star in the immediate vicinity and/or one covered by a blooming spike). With galaxies, it depends how close the bloom is to the core and any spiral arms. With nebulae, it can be a problem since it will easily leave artefacts.

I use a string in front of my dewshield for the generation of spikes and this is a further complication when it comes to removing blooms using software.

If you have a friend or a member in a local club who has an ST-10XME, ask him if you can borrow the camera for an evening and take some test exposures of an open cluster, a globular cluster, a galaxy and a nebula so that you can see for yourself.

Generally I study the histogram to determine what exposures to use. However, with the ST-10XME, my first glimpse is the field of view and the brightest stars. Anything at mag 6 and over is okay with five minute exposures. Things get ugly when there is a really bright star in the field of view (ex. mag 3-4) and which leads me to the next step (isolated or with other stars in the immediate vicinity).

In general, the ST-10XME is an awesome camera .... if it wasn't for those blooms, it would have been a dream camera.

Anthony.