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Posts Made By: dan kowall

January 18, 2010 02:29 PM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Deep Sky

M1 with 2-meter Faulkes North Telescope

Posted By dan kowall
Looks like they had some guiding problems.
Do you know any details about the image, Tyler, like what kind of camera was used, exposure information, etc.?
I read that this is the world's largest robotic telescope. Does this mean that the SLAS members didn't get to go to Hawaii?
That's a pretty cool clamshell that houses the scope.

dan

January 18, 2010 02:38 PM Forum: Equipment Talk

A-P 130 StarFire Gran Turismo Quandary

Posted By dan kowall
..... there really is no "right" answer.....
Perhaps.
There is Meyer's Law, though:
"In any emotional conflict, the thing that you find the hardest to do is the thing that you should do." (John D. McDonald)

Works for me.

dan

January 21, 2010 02:23 PM Forum: Refractors

R.E. Brandt Optics

Posted By dan kowall
As an aside, I see that someone has a 12" lens cell by Brandt for sale/auction on that popular site.

dan

January 24, 2010 04:09 PM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Deep Sky

Abell 13 PK 204-8.1

Posted By dan kowall
That's a new one for me, Chris.
There certainly aren't many images of this one out there.
I think that it is ever so slightly black-clipped. I was able to tease out some more faint stuff from the jpeg, so I'm sure that you can do better with the original data. CCDStack tends to set the black point a little high when using the defaults. Most people lower it before saving to tiff. It's easy enough to reset it after subsequent stretching in PhotoShop. God knows that you need every low end photon when imaging something as dim as this.
Well done on a difficult target.

dan

February 23, 2010 06:15 PM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Deep Sky

Something a little different: IC 426 in Orion

Posted By dan kowall
That's one I've never seen before.
Thanks for the introduction, Eric.
My only suggestion would be to try some deconvolution on just the stars to tighten them up a bit.
I'm putting this one on my to-do list for next year.
Great catch.

dan

P.S.
I assume that one of the subexposures was blue, not 2 greens as written?

March 5, 2010 04:42 PM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Deep Sky

Web site comments wanted

Posted By dan kowall
Hi Charlie,
The site looks pretty good so far.
It presents fine in Safari, but with the settings that I have in Firefox I get the thumbnail text intruding onto the thumbnail below. I also get double vertical scroll bars on some pages (using a 1680 x 1050 monitor). This makes viewing the page a bit clumsy, but you can change some things in the html to prevent this.
I had a good time putting up my site; I got a web girl to do all of the heavy lifting setting up the site, and then I got a couple of html books that are aimed at us "Dummies". Happily, it turns out that basic html is easy to learn and that with even with a rudimentary knowledge there is a lot that you can do on your own. I haven't had to go back to web girl since she set up my site and I've messed with it quite a bit.
I use Adobe GoLive, educational version, for editing. It's easy to use for this "dummy".

dan kowall

March 19, 2010 03:31 PM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Deep Sky

M106

Posted By dan kowall
It's a little dark on my monitor, Eric, but, other than that, I like the processing. It's natural and not over-done.

dan

May 10, 2010 03:14 PM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Deep Sky

M101 Luminance - Nocturne Observatory

Posted By dan kowall
That's tasteful.
Here's another vote for the monochrome, Tyler.
What do they say "Everything that was old, is new again"?
This image sure has the legs to stand on its own.

dan

May 25, 2010 05:35 PM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Deep Sky

Omega Centauri - NGC 5139

Posted By dan kowall
An impressive achievement at that elevation, Jim.
The colors look right on, too.

dan

June 27, 2010 01:59 PM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Deep Sky

The Eagle - M16

Posted By dan kowall
That's a good field of view and framing for this nebula, Jim.

dan

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