CCD Imager

Hi Andrew You must be the unluckiest astro imager in the world! Mounts from two prestigious manufacturers and both had problems requiring returning to base. You could probably count on one had how many mounts each company have had to repair at base. I have owned 2 AP mounts over the last 24 years and currently own the GM2000 Strictly speaking, in the UK at least, the Mach 2 should be compared with the GM2000 where both cost around £14K. The GM1000 is much less at 10K. The support for 10 micron in the US is sketchy to say the least, only one guy? What happens when the poor overworked fella needs a 2 week holiday? But, its just the same for users of AP mounts in the UK, zero support here, any issues and off it trots back to the US. Any issues I have had and a phone call or email to Baader and they respond very quickly and when I had an issue with the knob on the mounting plate, a replacement arrived within days. Michael Risch is your main man and Thomas Baader also communicates. The 10 micron forum is awash with information and very knowledgeable people, response to questions occur within hours and will solve the majority of users questions. Baader in Europe front any issues with 10 micron mounts and if need be they ship them back to 10 micron for repair. The clutch knobs on the GM1000 are an issue and poor design, one of its shortcomings, but the bigger mounts knobs are much better. The knobs on the GM2000 work perfectly well, I had one AP knob finger break on me, due to its shape and maybe after a few years of use, became more brittle. The thru the mount cabling is a nice feature of the Mach 2, better suited to the mobile imager. As my mount is permanently mounted with good cable management, it isn’t really an issue. And the 10 micron mount head can be split into 2 components for easier transport and assembly in the field. I can attest to this having taken it to Kelling star party on several occasions. I personally find the handset interface on a PC very useful, you could always use the real thing and there are many mount control packages to control the mount if desired. When powering up the mount, I always use the desktop keypad to unpark and slew to my first object, great too for looking at modelling data. I do think that calling third party software for modelling "a bit shocking" surprising. The truth is that there are several such packages available, I know of four, giving you options and in some, with quite comprehensive tools. These were developed by third parties in direct liaison with Baader, just as AP has done with Ray Gralak for APCC. In reality that is no different to 10 micron. So there is no concern about software creators for 10 micron modelling software, dont think they will get bored or retire! Besides, this question has already been answered, sadly the author of Model Maker died at an early age, so Baader collaborated with other software engineers to develop new software, whilst you could still use Model Maker. And likewise, heaven forbid, that Roland left us, will AP become kaput? 10 micron happens to be a much larger company. Your focus seems to be on physical attributes and software, I was hoping you would compare how the mounts perform, for example, pointing accuracy, periodic error, telescope capacity, backlash, all measured with data and graphs. My impression is that the Mach 2 is a superb modern mount capable of unguided imaging, but its cost here in the UK is similar to the GM2000 that is larger and has a bigger payload capacity. As 10 micron support in the US is limited, you would be better off with the Mach 2 and conversely, here in Europe, we would fare better with 10 micron. Adrian

Great image! wait till you add Russ Cromans Blur XTerminator!! Adrian

Maybe only one image a year, but worth the wait And yes, Russ Croman's software works its magic! Seems to add some red to your image or was that you tweaking colour balance? Adrian

Ive just completed imaging this, only 12 hours though and I can already see the background dust will need some eeking out. Youve captured it well, I like the contrasting colours, the blue and red of NGC1333 make the image more pleasing.

I applaud you for attempting a difficult object from London! Maybe time to transfer your skills to the country side? An hour or two's drive maybe? Adrian

Hi Olly I see this a lot with processed galaxy images, the blue in particular is emphasized beyond natural. Modern manipulation with colour masks to enhance colours has let some too loose! Its good to see Pixinsight develop their colour celibatarian tools, the latest being SPCC to keep balance in check. Adrian

Yes, background is virtually neutral black now, measuring in Photoshop reveals an RGB of 36:37:38 Sometimes our minds and eyes play tricks on us, especially after processing images for hours on end. Always a good idea to measure the background to check for neutrality, be it in Photoshop, Pixy or whatever. Now looks a very decent image Adrian

I like the image and for just the colour component, it could pass as a completed image! My only comment would be that the background has a green cast. I imported into Photoshop and using the colour sampling tool, typical background numbers were RGB: 31:41:30. Correcting the colour balance gives an even more pleasing image.. Adrian

Certainly you wont have any issues rotating the camera to fit an object! Its just that the majority of us are used to landscape format, I'm sure given time, one would get used to a square format. Back in the 90's I had a back illuminated SITe sensor with whopping 24 micron pixels, but its such a long time ago I cant remember what I thought at the time! Having more real estate does bring its own issues, most noticeably off axis aberrations of your telescope become evident, maybe hidden by smaller sensors, so you need to pick your telescopes wisely. My image above taken with the Askar 400 does show coma in the corners, to me it is bearable and because I have reduced the size of the image, its not really noticeable. I would suggest that an APSc size sensor will work nicely with current commonly used scopes, full frame makes life more complicated!

Thanks Ian, it would be well worth a go with the 533, its a great camera, you would capture the Iris and Witch/Ghost with lots of surrounding nebulosity. I have the older 183 as a second/back up camera and often thought about the 533, just a bit unsure about its square format, how do you get on with it? Adrian

Thanks guys. Steve, it was surprising how much more S/N there was from my 2 hours at Kelling, much more than for my efforts at home, even though I live under Bortle 4 skies! Adrian

Thought it would be nice to post this image and provoke your thoughts back to those barmy warm summer nights, lol Actually taken in early December over a couple of nights with the initial intention of a few simple shots to test my new Askar 107 PHQ refractor. I ended up with 9 hours of data over a couple of nights as it was setting early, roughly 1:1:1 for Ha, OIII and S2 filters. ASI6200 camera on a 10 micron mount Adrian

Taken with an Askar 400mm refractor and ASI6200 camera on an AM5 mount, around 10 hours of data. I initially started this at the Kelling Heath star party, but due to adverse weather conditions, I only captured 2 hours of luminance data over the whole week! although being from a dark site, it helped enormously. More luminance and RGB exposures were captured from home over 2-3 nights. Adrian

Taken with a newly acquired Askar 107PHQ at prime focus. Imaged with the ASI6200 in my garden observatory. total time was around 8 hours, lacking a bit in S2, but with no signs of a clear sky this week, I processed the data anyway. Adrian

Thanks Gary, thats the main reason I bought the 200mm lens, to couple to a full frame camera for those very wide shots that arent so common, you can almost image whole constellations! Adrian

I prefer your first posted image, it looks the most natural and very nice. Many galaxies dont actually have a lot of blue in the outer arms, I suspect people tweak the colour to suit their taste! Have you tried the Photometric colour calibration technique in Pixinsight to guide you? Adrian

The field of view of this image is nearly 10 degrees, taken with the 200mm Askar Lens and ASI6200. I like to see the tendrils fade into the distance beyond the main nebula Total exposure time thru SHO filters was 3.75 hrs, the most I could capture at the time, maybe I could collect more photons in the future to bring out the surrounding nebulosity more, but I do like it as it is. Adrian

Do notice that the flare from the bright lower left arc extends all the way to the middle of the image. I dont have an issue processing this image and have maintained most of it, I just wanted to show the extent of problematic internal reflections that you encountered.

My image looks far worse than it actually is because of the extreme stretch, in fact I couldnt see the arc reflections in a single sub. My procedure now is to remove the stars and either clone stamp or use the healing brush to remove those reflections. I think my problem is that I now have a dome observatory and so light reflects every where! I need to examine every possible source, possibly even the dome shutter as the scope is quite near to it.

You would be left with just M81

To diagnose, I one by one removed optical components, filters, filter wheel, but the main culprit was the field flattener. The image contains different sources of reflections as you probably guessed!

Ha, thought you would appreciate that one

Wim, 100% agree, any light incursion can be scattered within the optical path, probably close to the sensor, there are several potential reflective surfaces. The problem is identifying its source. Here is an image I had fun with! Work out the problems here

Maybe it is the street light then, would fit with the green colour of the light intrusion. Adrian

The fact that it is not in your Antennae image suggests its not a fixed light source on your imaging rig or related to the camera, so a source close to your camera that doesnt move could be the culprit or as Wim suggested a star just outside the FOV. I looked at Stellarium and there arent really any bright stars close by that makes me wonder if this is the cause, but I think its still the most likely. A street light I think is unlikely as that would produce a much more diffuse gradient across the image. The fact that it is green suggests a "light pollution" source rather than a star. Thesee artefacts are a pain in the a**** and it is always best to find their source, but to edit, I would remove stars with Star Xterminator or Starnet then easily clone stamp or use the spot healing brush tool in Photoshop. Adrian