Posts Made By: Charles Hakes

Have had time to play with some accumulating data this week instead of just getting more... I never got that "good" night of seeing for the L channel, so this is about 20 minutes each of RGB with some "leftover" L. I would really like to get more data once the scope comes back on line, but I am pretty happy with the color balance here. I had a couple of versions of this, one with a "blacker" sky, but decided to post this one with the grain in the background, just to see more stuff. I am still learning this processing business... More often than not I am tempted to just re-take an image.

Thanks for looking. Processing hints and comments always welcome.

Charlie

Finally get to look through some data from the out-of-action LX200. The good news is that the RA motor still works, and there was at least some power getting to a fried connector. I will try to change that out today and see if I can get it to work.

M66 has 20 minutes each of RGB, and a little more that twice that in luminance. There are some flat (with camera rotation) issues, but that is hard to correct without the scope mounted right now.

Processing suggestions always welcome. (and needed!) Thanks for looking.

Charlie

So... how does my (your?) image stack up to a scope with REALLY good seeing? Some of you may have done this exercise already, and you likely would have done a better job of it. I didn’t plug it in to TheSky for really accurate scaling, but I did get ~.051”/pixel from “eyeball” scaling to my image.

This is the Hubble image of M51 scaled by ~17.2x smaller so its pixels are now ~.88”, which is about what I have. I next rotated and cropped my image (on the next post) to the same size and fiddled with the color intensity a little to get a closer match.

This obviously works better when you can blink between the images, but there are a couple of things that jump out. The first are the foreground stars - no matter how hard I try, I will never get the stars to fit into just a pixel! But some of those stars are really background galaxies, that you can see when you zoom in really far to the Hubble shot. (the original, not this one) I never would have caught them as such on mine, but they don’t bloom out, so there is much less difference between the apparent size between the two shots. You can really find them using the blink test. The second are the star forming regions. I didn’t look hard enough on line, but it sure looks to me like the red is from some “extra” Ha exposure. Does anyone know for sure?

Oh well, here they are… First one is from Hubble.

Charlie

I did finally get the 16" LX200 to boot. (Although it's guts are spread out along a lab bench right now. Careful use of a multi-meter and soldering iron.) While it is disassembled, I think I will do whatever tune-up hints I can find on-line. Maybe re-grease? I gotta get a wedge made too.

In the mean time, I dusted off a 10" f6.3 LX200 and tried it out with the ST-10XE. The scope is vintage early 90's or so, but not much used with the 16" available. There was about an hour last night between the moon and the dawn, which is when I took this one. About 5 minutes each of LRGB. I used a home-made (from an 80mm Williams Optics acromat) guide scope.

Still to do with the 10" scope:
Ditch the focal reducer (which was still on the camera and focuser from the bigger scope.)
Bob's Knobs! (needs it bad.)
Take some reasonable flats. (It got light a bit too fast this morning.)

Thanks for looking. Comments welcome.

Charlie

Hi all,

I need some last minute comments before I go and spend some money.

After several years of fiddling, I have decided to replace the field de-rotator with a wedge on the 16" LX200 scope. Meade does not make one. One on-line source has a ~4+ month wait. Another on-line source is way out of the price range. So... There is a local welder that makes piers for a local scope shop and I understand the turn-around time is very fast, and the cost is very reasonable. I have made a cardboard prototype, and am ready to hand it over. The plan was a 1/2" base and other parts 3/8" steel welded into a "box", with an adjustable diagonal plate. (Heavy!) The azimuth adjustment will be two "tabs" under the base plate, and the altitude adjustment will be two screws pushing up from the bottom of the plate that holds the scope. The scope plate will pivot at the top. The photo shows the general design. It is offset so the center of mass will be over the center of the pier.

Comments? Questions? Feedback?

Thanks
Charlie

Hi all,

I need some last minute comments before I go and spend some money.

After several years of fiddling, I have decided to replace the field de-rotator with a wedge on the 16" LX200 scope. Meade does not make one. One on-line source has a ~4+ month wait. Another on-line source is way out of the price range. So... There is a local welder that makes piers for a local scope shop and I understand the turn-around time is very fast, and the cost is very reasonable. I have made a cardboard prototype, and am ready to hand it over. The plan was a 1/2" base and other parts 3/8" steel welded into a "box", with an adjustable diagonal plate. (Heavy!) The azimuth adjustment will be two "tabs" under the base plate, and the altitude adjustment will be two screws pushing up from the bottom of the plate that holds the scope. The scope plate will pivot at the top. The photo shows the general design. It is offset so the center of mass will be over the center of the pier.

Comments? Questions? Feedback? (I also posted on the Equipment Forum)

Thanks
Charlie

I had not done M105 previously, so here is my first try at it - also round two with the 10" f6.3. I did get some Bob's knobs, but think I need a second collimation try, as that 6.3 seems trickier than the f10. I thought my flats were much better when I took them, but I ended up with a weird blue streak coming from the side. (Any ideas?!)

As long as all possible observing issues are converging in the Four Corners this month, I was not surprised when I got ice crystals in the camera that I hadn't seen this year yet. Today I am baking the desiccant, but that won't help the higher temperature on this set of shots. Or maybe these things are just dim. LRGB was ~32:14:14:16 total via 2 min subs.

...and finally when I tried to post, I get the message that the file is too big, so I reduce the jpg quality... probably those leftover color dots... arrggh...

Comments and critiques always welcome.

Charlie

A little easier to process this one than those elliptical galaxies. Again, the 10" f6.3 scope. This time LRGB ~23:11:10:9 in 1min subs. After the fact I think I would re-frame it.

Charlie

We finally got the 16" scope back in place. The mirror is taking some time to "settle" again though. This shot is only ~18 minutes total, as I ended up throwing out at least half of the frames, and then it started getting light...

I still have a couple of shots to finish processing from the 10" scope, so maybe I can get that done this weekend.

Charlie

This is a couple of hours worth a from a few days ago before the moon moved into the region - another image with the re-installed 16" scope. The seeing was typical (i.e. bad) as you can likely tell, but I think this turned out alright considering the flat/rotation issue we have in this configuration.

In the mean time, we have hosted two star parties at the observatory totaling about 40 middle school kids. Their favorite part was watching 10 second "real time" images of M104 come in. (Nothing saved from that though.)

Any suggestions for removing the color "noise" from the background here? I have tried various lowpass filtering options, but am still fumbling around for a semi-consistent processing algorithm. Here I just did a "DDP" on the L channel. Maybe one of these days I will have the time for this.

Charlie