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Terry Wood

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One Mo' Image from a HOTS CaK PST

Started by pghyndman, 10/13/2005 12:35AM
Posted 10/13/2005 12:35AM | Edited 10/13/2005 01:12AM Opening Post
Hi Y'all,

First and foremost, I would be remiss if I did not give heartfelt thanks to Gerry, our friends at Coronado and Meade, and all the particpants that made HOTS 2005 such a special and memorable event. We DEFINITELY have to do this again!!!

Sorry for the delay in posting this, but I'm older and far less agile than Tom! smile

We were able to con, er... "convince" Bill Rich from Meade to overnight a DSI Pro (as in monochromatic camera) to the HOTS venue, as it seemed to be well suited to the task of capturing ultra-narrowband images.

We excitedly looked forward to the test drive, as with the DSI Pro ALL pixels are available when imaging monochromatic sources such as H-a or CaK (unlike RGB/CMYK arrays which only allocate a small percentage). The proverbial icing on the cake was that exposures could be cranked down as far as 1/10,000th of a sec, letting us negate the need for additional "knock-down" filters, better freezing atmospheric bugaboos (WooHoo!)

Scampering about like schoolkids doing homework on the bus TO school (oops?), from the time we loaded the software till the last frame was taken was less than 60 minutes (huff, puff, puff!)

Clouds threatened to thwart our efforts, so we "shot" through a window (duh?) looking for holes in the clouds.

Without further ado, here's a single (as in unstacked) image from one of the sets, (chosen at random):



We used a CEMAX barlow lens to reach focus, but it looks like a relay-free setup may be possible (more info soon!)

BTW, Meade provided very portable mounts for the PST H-a/Cak scopes that when level and the time/date is entered are ready to track the sun... hot stuff!

Oh... Tom, Hiram, and I were the thieves and none of us had imaged with the PST CaK or had ever used a DSI prior to this 60 minute marathon. Hmmm, I just may get some of this stuff for my own arsenal.


Cheers,

Paul

PS: some pics of the event:
http://www.astro-nut.com/Hots2005/index.htm

PPS: Our only connection to Coronado and Meade is that we LOVE playing with their goodies!


Attached Image:

pghyndman's attachment for post 27436

Posted 10/13/2005 02:30AM #1
Aha, the image with Hiram looking through an SM90 has a funny looking Meade type mount on the right side. Is that the new Corondao ETX mount? Sure looks like my old conversion. I want royalties.



Attached Image:

astromart55's attachment for post 97228

Don Wyman
Obsession #1166 18" f/4.5
with Argo Navis and ServoCat
WO Megrez 90 APO
Coronado PST
Posted 10/14/2005 05:58PM #2
Paul, Any more info on the mounts you saw/used. I'm having a tough time finding stuff on the Meade web site. Is this just a simple ETX mount adapted for Coronado scopes?