Posts Made By: Greg Bradley

Anyone using a modified 400D?

I'd love to hear a review.

Greg.

There's a long story that goes with this one.

Its only 55 minutes but luckily its a bright object.

Bad weather and a clear patch starting at 3am opened an opportunity after a few nights of cloud cover at my remote dark site observatory in NSW Australia.

RCOS 12.5 inch, STL11000CM camera, Takahashi NJP mount and a large dose of patience.

5 x 10 minutes, 1 x 5 minutes.

http://tinyurl.com/28cnpc

Greg.

I have 2 observatories and they are at slightly different latitudes. So I have been trying to minimise the polar alignment time when switching between the 2.

In the southern hemisphere it is much harder to use a polar alignment scope as the pole stars are incredibly dim and just are hard to spot.

I found I can put a laser collimator (Antares newtonian $25 laser collimator - the type that fits in a 1.25 inch eyepiece holder) on the metal end of the polar alignment scope of the mount and it projects and hold it there by hand and have it square. It projects a beam through the polar alignment scope (when the OTA is to the east or west) and this beam hits the ceiling of my observatory. I marked it with a piece of black electrical tape so next time I simply adjust the mount until the beam hits the same spot and I should have achieved a repeat of the previous aligment saving me from having to do a fresh drift alignment.

I think it would be a great feature on a mount to have a built in laser projector that can shine on a wall/ceiling much like a lot of power tools do these days.

Greg.

RCOS 12.5 inch, STL11000CM, Tak NJP mount. Taken at my dark site observatory on the weekend.
7x15 minutes plus extracted luminance.

http://tinyurl.com/246u8o

Greg

One of my favourites.

RCOS 12.5 inch, STL11000CM camera at -25C. Stunning seeing and transparency plus it was right near the zenith. 7 x 15 minutes
colour, 2 x 15 minutes Ha. I shot luminance at 2x2 and a UHC filter but they detracted from the colour depth of the image. The image loses a bit of impact in the conversion to Jpeg.

http://tinyurl.com/2exy5k

Greg.

Here is the Eagle Nebula from the same imaging trip.

4 x 15 minutes colour, 2 x 15 minutes Ha. STL11000CM, RCOS 12.5 inch.

There are rich colours and rich star colours in this area of the sky.

http://tinyurl.com/234jgu

Greg.

SBig STL11000CM, RCOS 12.5 inch at F6.75, 8 x 10 minutes.

http://tinyurl.com/yww4mf

Greg.

4 hours. STL11000CM, Tak NJP mount, RCOS 12.5 inch at F6.75.

http://tinyurl.com/28dnxc


Greg.

STL11000CM, Nikon 50mm F1.8 lens.
Ha and colour composite, 2 panel mosaic. Subs were 5 and 10 minutes.

http://tinyurl.com/2ypy4p

Greg.

I reprocessed my recent Trifid as I wasn't happy with the final image. I prefer this one.

http://tinyurl.com/2dw335


Greg.