Posts Made By: Andrew Riehl

beautiful as usual ron. The green is interesting as well. I have seen it in other images of the object; there obviously seems to be something going on aside from the 'normal' reflection nebula process. Perhaps the particles that make up this nebula are a different size than most others and therefore scatter a little more green. I dunno.

well, it depends on what you consider saveable...The banding looks like an electronic interfence signal (ground loop or the like). Also looks like maybe images were added before the dark frames were applied. Were your darks and light frames taken at the same time under identical conditions? do you have original light frames and darks you can post? I was able to clean it up a bit, but I didn't have a whole lot of time to put into it. What I did was to use a section of the dark area in the upper left as a tiny little dark frame. I then aligned the banding over many corresponding tiny sections of the image and subtracted it, allowing the bands to cancel out. If I had the time, I could probably clean it up a lot more, but if you still have original images, it may be much easier to fix it with them.

Comparing the UO super erfles to say a 1.25 UO konig, I'd pick the Super erfle. I own 20 and 25mm super erfles, as well as a 16mm konig. I'm much happier with the super erfles over the konig; comared to the SE's, the konig's eye relief is pretty poor, and I get much more ghosting in the Konig. Been looking for a used SE to replace the 16mm konig, but the SE's don't come up for sale too often (which says something on its own). From what I remember, the SE edge correction is right on line with the UO konigs, although sometimes with a slightly smaller FOV. The se's would probably be very nice in your 6" f/8 system, I'd reccomend them to anyone looking for good performance for that price range, especially over the 1.25" UO konigs.

I'd agree with the Paramount. when well tuned, it is amazing; Ron Wodaski routinely shoots 10 minute unguided exposures with a c-14 on his. Plus you get the ultimate in software integration. now as for value per $; I can't offer too much opinion there...

well, how long you can autoguide successfuly depends on many things, including the accuracy of your polar alignment, the accuracy of your mount's tracking, focal length, atmospheric conditions, the guider itself, etc. In theory, if your polar alignment is dead on, and your gears and drives are decent (without random wild errors), you should be able to autoguide indefinately. even without PEC, 5-8 minutes is nowhere close to what I would a reliable figure. one of the setups I'm using is a Takahashi fs-78 refractor @ f/5.9 (460mm focal length) with an SBIG st-2000 Camera. This all rides on a standard GP mount, outfitted with cheap chinese drive motors and controller (for an eq-4 mount). I usually shoot 10 minute exposures with it, and have experienced nothing but joy. Admittedly I have tweaked the mount a good bit (regreasing, deburring, etc.), but considering the motors running it, I'm very happy with the performance. I could easily go much longer if I like (but I really don't like taking the risk of airplanes, headlights hitting the scope, cosmic ray hits, the cat bumping into the mount, etc.) As little time as I have to image, I'm a lot more comfortable throwing away a 10 minute exposure than a much longer one if need be. Granted imaging at this relatively tiny focal length is very simple. The mod would work with any camera having mechanical relays (ie an st-4 or st-237, any other sbigs should have the optional relay box). Personally, I'm not a big fan of SX cameras, especially with the star2000 routine; guiding with the star2000 exactly doubles your exposure time over using a seperate autoguider or a camera with a seperate guide chip (such as sbig). There's several other reasons why I'm not fond of them, but they are mostly personal tradeoffs that may not apply to yourself. What intrument(s) do you plan to image on the mount with? If you don't already have it, buy Ron Wodaski's book 'the new ccd astronomy' before buying equipment; it will help you much more than I ever will. Regards.

Howdy. First off, whoever told you the vixen controller can't be adapted for use with an autoguider is totally wrong. I'm assisting somebody on a similar modification right now over in the ccd forum under "opinions on Vixen GP-DX autoguiding setup??" thread. The sbig relay box would be much simpler to use than the meade 520 relay, but unfortunately I don't think the 5v the 201 outputs is enough to fire the relays, maybe someone can verify this for me. Anyway, the 520 can be used just the same, the simplest way to would be to make the connections inside the controller with an piece of cable. Then extend the cable outside the box a ways before wiring on the db-15 connector. The connector being flush mounted to the controller is by no means necessary. There will be some slight details that differ from the thread in the ccd forum due to the nature of the 520's connections, but the main concepts are the same. I'm more than happy to try to talk you through it.

very nice indeed. Where do you find all these unclouded skies?

IMHO, no. The IDAS passes about 92% (if my memory is accurate) at h-alpha. If you are planning to only shoot h-alpha that night, wouldn't hurt to take it off, but wouldn't make a major difference I believe. If you plan on shooting color as well that session, absolutely leave it on.

maybe he was trained by OJ during his time in the states. Ooops, that's right, OJ's innocent...

you see, this is another area where we're damned if we do and damned if we don't. If we become isolationists and get out of world affairs and trade, we are starving the poor countries that depend on that trade and that's why they'll hate us. If we engage in trade with them, we are imperialist scum only interested in how much we can leech from these poor innocent countries.
If we send troops to defeat a tyranical regime, we are imperialists who have no right to be there and are only doing so for monetary concerns--that's why they hate us. If we arm the enemies of such a regime so as to keep our sons and daughters out of harms way, we are dealing arms for monetary concerns with no respect for human rights--that's why they hate us.
The world is a fluid situation. One day's enemy is the next week's best buddy. That's just the way life is.