Posts Made By: Tom Gwilym

These image can't compare with some of the stuff I've seen in this forum, but I think this is kind of a fun shot.

I compared a couple of my M51 shots to show the supernova that was found last month. Kind of grainy and noisy, but they get the point across!
Info:
- Meade 12" LX200
- Canon 10D
- 9 x 5 minute exposures
- ImagesPlus and Photoshop
- Augtoguided with Orion 80ED piggy back on LX200/Vesta Pro SC/GuideDog

Tom

Eric Pellegrini said:

Pretty good for a 300 dollar camera, the auto guiding helps getting reasonable exposures. Could definitely have been harder if I had not had previous experience.

Nice job Eric! I've got the DSI also myself, but being of the male gender, I've just fooled around with it a lot without reading the manual and haven't really come up with anything too good yet. I'm just kind of confused about all the different formats the software will save it in. Maybe I need to read some more?
-Tom
www.geocities.com/tegwilym2/astrophotos

Here is a shot of M31 from last week. It's a stack of images over a 2 night period for a total of 26 frames stacked. The edges around the galaxy need some work still, I just disoverd Russ Croman's gradient tool, so I'll try that out.

Anyway, here it is. Comments (good or bad!) are welcome!

Tom
-Renton, WA

Everyone else is posting images of this thing, so here is my attempt at it.

-Tom
Renton,WA

I pretty much missed the opposition weekend due to Seattle crud, but I have a few chances this week with clear skies before the morning fog rolls in. Although, this can't compare with some of the amazing images some of you guys take with he same scope and camera I have, I'll shamelessly post this attempt.

-Tom
Renton, WA
www.eastsideastro.org/observatory (my new site - ignore dead links, it's not done yet!)

My best M42 yet! This was taken about a week ago from my backyard observatory here in the Seattle area. The moon was bright 1st quarter, but I had to try it anyway. I took this with an IDAS light pollution filter that I'm testing out. Details:

Orion 80ED piggybacked and guided with 12" LX200 using Meade DSI
Canon 10D / 18 exposures varying from 1.5 to 5 minutes, mostly ISO 800. I put a couple shots of ISO 1600 in there also.
Stacked with Images Plus, tweaked in Photoshop, and smoothed in Neat Image.

Comments or harassements always welcome!

Tom - Renton, WA

...ok, my site will never be complete, but lets just say that the
basic framework and layout is pretty much done. I still have ideas
for more pages to add, and different layouts to do for each image
other than just a link to the .jpg, but at least the incomplete links
are completed! :-)

Please visit my site and check it out. All images other than a few,
have been taken from my light polluted backyard observatory about 10
miles from the source of the "Great Seattle Nebula". Primary camera
is the Canon 10D for deep sky, and Vesta Pro for more local solar
system/lunar images.

www.eastsideastro.org/observatory

Tom

Here is my newly completed web page for my Astro-shack in my backyard in lovely (and very wet and cloudy) Renton, WA.

http://www.eastsideastro.org/observatory

I completed the observatory the summer before last (although I'm still tweaking things) and filled in all the dead pages on the web site finally last week.

Tom

I'm still learning the tricks for autoguiding and finally had another
chance to try some things that people gave me advice on from the
Yahoogroups list. Only one clear night, not super good, but I take
what I can get here in the Seattle area!

What I did this time -
- Longer exposures on the DSI guider camera. I used 4 - 5.5
seconds this time. HUGE improvement on the tracking!! I was using 1.5
seconds before and the scope moved too much.

- Backlash. I was told that I should turn this off. I checked the
mount and it appeared to be off since it was set to "00" so I left it.

- I did download the CCDWare PEC software for the mount analysis,
but didn't run it yet since I figured I just had this one night to
play. I'll save that for a different night - hopefully before the 30
trial runs out.

The images are here on my site, the newest are on the front page.
http://www.eastsideastro.org/observatory/

M51 was just a quick 3 x 5 minute shot, but I'm very happy how that
came out even with the few frames. It was late and I had to get to bed.

M63 looking better, I'm really able to get the "sunflower seeds" in
this galaxy now.

M64 processing challenge to make this look ok. It needs more
exposures and more work.

M106 my first shot at this one. I didn't realize it was so big - and
very cool looking!

I'm getting there slowly.....

Tom
Renton, WA

That's a great shot of a dim object even with the bright moon out. I've had similar skies here in Seattle with some bright haze in the sky and a VERY bright moon. I haven't even made an attempt to go out lately and try imaging. I know this is wasted sky, the clearing can't stay around much longer (this is Seattle that I'm living in!)
I've attached my bubble image. Taken with a Vesta Pro webcam, LX90, and a lot of light pollution about 7 miles east of Seattle.

Tom
http://www.geocities.com/tegwilym2/astrophotos