Posts Made By: Eric Pellegrini

I am helping with an observational astronomy class this winter for my TA position at school. One thing we will be doing among others is the moon. Unfortunaly it is cloudy a lot so as a backup we would images on hand to play with. So I am looking for some top notch moon images. I know their out there. If you would like to contribute to the education of future astronomers please let me know. Thanks

Eric Pellegrini

[email protected]

Here is my first film image using an autoguider (webcam) instead of my self. I also used my new f5 10 inch newt with Fugi Superia. I got about 5-6 arcsec fwhm. I think it was pretty good considering th guiding resolution was 2"/pixel and seeing usually 3 or 4 Arcsec.

From heavily light polluted location 1/2 mile from Michigan State campus. Processing done with my laptop so may look funny on regular monitors.

Comments?

Hello,
This may sound funny but I need to make some color images using data taken on a 4m telescope in chile. I want to smoothly blend in an unsaturated image of a core of a galaxy onto a burned out full image. I just don't know how to set up a gradient so there is a smooth transition between the two. I am using photoshop

Can anyone help?

Eric Pellegrini

http://www.msu.edu/~pelleg10/n3603auto2.jpg

Image is mosaic of many images taken in narrow filters. My first pro photo and thought I would show it to some people who do much better with much less. Each field is 3 exposures of ~900sec combined to reduced noise and cosmic rays. Red:Ha Blue: 6100 continuum filter Green: 5007 Angstrom OIII. Composed of two different fields taken on two nights and combined with IRAF with color processing in IRIS. In JPEG form it is 3 pixel/arcsec.
It was a mossaic camera with two ccds so it was about two months to get everthing done. There were also light leaks on the first night which made things a mess. Stair steps and stuff.
Let me know what ya think.

Eric

I have a 10" Newt that was evaluated by Woden optics. They say the mirror is marginaly ok. It has a strehl ratio of .93 but is said to be a little rough with a raised center 4 inches in diameter. I am unsure if I should refigure the mirror. I have to say I was a little disappointed about some double stars and when comparing to a 8" Celestron SCT the SCT has better "crispness".

The point: An Orion 10" newt should do better than the 8" SCT so I would hope to get at least to the level of an 8", right? (I am not talking about coma, comparisons were made under similar magnifications and with on axis stars and planets)

The mirror is guaranteed to a minimum specification of the following:
Strehl Ratio of .960 or higher
RMS Surface error of 8.4nm or better
P-V Surface Error of 1/18 wave or better
Should I do it?
Eric

I have taken some more images with my DSI of m27 and now of some galaxy groups. They are definitly not great but atleast people can see what you can do with the camera. I noticed the light polution does not help with the color balance and this time around not using the red filter on the camera made things not go easily.
Any way.

I have had the chance to play around with my new used st-7 recently and am happy with how it works. It is much easier to use than my first camera an Meade DSI and the guiding is quite good even with my EQ-6. I use a 10 F5 newt figured by Wooden optics.

Eric

Also one of M44

I went to M51 again, but I have no filters. As soon as my subject exams are over I hope to get out and try some real challenging targets.
St7-E 13 3min images added up with a 10 Newt on a very modified eq6. The seeing was mediocre at 4". No flat field I faked one using Iris and it worke real well.
Eric

I just got some meade RGBL filters for my St-7. The easiest object I know of is M57. I have done it in the past with my MEADE Dsi-C but wanted to try my ST-7. There are 9-3min images for each filter(RGB), no L. I have no wheel or filter slide yet and my have mixed up the B and G filters. I plan on checking the next chance I get.
Eric