Magnum

Is that the Nikon 180 f2.8? Lee

Hi Gina, i looked through your thread a couple of weeks ago regarding takumar lenses and the triple rig you made. I did try mine wide open but i seemed to get dodgy looking stars, though it may have been partly focus wasnt perfect, maybe i should try wide open again. lee

Playing in Orion with the Takumar 200mm f4 lens again last night, quite pleased with the results at F5.6. This is 13 x 10 min subs in Ha with my Atik 383L CCD. I did same framing a couple of weeks ago but were quite washed out by the moon, this time its produced a much deeper image of the surrounding nebulosity. Ive never imaged Orion so many times in one season before but trying to get the best I can with different combinations with the limited number of clear nights, needed a bit more date really but Orion is going behind my trees by 10pm now. Guided, captured, stacked & DDP in MaximDL, processed in photoshop. I did try step down rings last week to eliminate star spikes but wasn't happy with the vignetting they introduced so decided to live with the spikes. Lee

Excellent Olly

I just went on hot UK deals and coincidentally they popped up in a deal on Amazon for £153 Lee

Microlensing is one of the well known drawbacks with the Panasonic CMOS sensor, though I still prefer it to the Starburst Amp glow of some of the other CMOS sensors. If I had to buy a CMOS sensor it would still be the Panasonic based cams such as the 1600 and just put up with the artefacts on bright stars as its the most CCD like CMOS sensor currently available in my opinion, but for the foreseeable future I will be sticking with my Atik CCDs. Lee

Oh see your right, I feel a real Twit now, I didn't know what it was so just googled weird object near cone nebula and saw photo of Gyulbudaghian’s Nebula, now I see they look almost identical. I should have checked on a sky map before assuming it was that one. Im usually very careful about identifying objects, they aren't even in the same constellation LOL Cheers Lee

Took this image of the Cone Nebula area commonly referred to as the Christmas tree on Tuesday night, only got 70 mins as I left the draw of my observatory desk open and discovered when I went do close up that the camera was hitting the draw and had stalled the mount for over an hour. Luckily I never lock the EQ6 clutches very tight so it can just slip. 7 x 10 mins with my Atik460EX CCD & Altair Starwave 70mm ED & 0.6 reducer @ F3.6. Guided, captured, stacked and stretched in MaximDL, processed in Photoshop. The object 1/3rd of the way down the right edge is not an optical aberration but a real object called Gyulbudaghian’s Nebula, classed as a BiPolar variable nebula. CORRECTION, I miss identified it, its actually Hubbles variable Nebula, Oh dear I must be loosing it LOL

who's this, DEREK? I'm Lee from SEAKS LOL

Here is my 3rd and final pic from Monday nights wide field imaging test session. IC410 the tadpole Nebula and IC405 the flaming star nebula, really pleased with the field of view on this as its the perfect size to just capture both. 12 X 10 mins in Hydrogen Alpha with my Atik 460EX CCD & Altair Starwave ED70 refractor + Lightwave 0.6 reducer bringing it down to F3.6 @ 250mm FL. Guided, captured, stacked & stretched in MaximDL, processed in Photoshop. Lee

For this one i used H(H/O)O, Ha for red, Oiii for blue then a mix of the two for green in ratio of 30:70. I always experiment with the ration for the green until i get it how i like, but its usually around 30:70. if i want a natural red look the i use straight HOO. In Maxim i use DDP for the initial stretch, i try to stretch them so the mid and black level is about the same in each, this usually means stretching the oiii more than the Ha. I just eyeball it until i think they look about the same level. then in photoshop I completely process each channel separately as if it they were both stand alone mono images. Next i combine the 2 to make the green channel, now i have 3 images to paste into the Final RGB, then use selective colour to fine tune the colors, normally only have to adjust the red channel with a tip Olly showed me. So seldt reds then move cyan slider to the left this will increase red/orange saturation the move the yellow slider to the right which pushes it into the golden shades.. Lee

Yes bi colour can be combined in a lot of different ways, but seems to work better on some objects than others. I just did a bi colour M42 but not much colour variation at all, yet objects like the rossette seem to show a wealth of shades from just the 2 filters. thanks for the info on the Herbig Haro object, i recently captured another one of those in my Pelican nebula image. Lee

Second target of 3 from last nights wide field test with my ED70mm refractor reduced to f3.6 with the Lightwave 0.6 reducer. Horsehead Nebula. This 9 X 10 mins in Ha with the Atik 460CCD. it had a tad of coma in the corners with the 12.5mm x 10mm sensor but reduced it as much as I can with selective star reduction. so I think it would also work good with the Hypercam 183, as thats similar size sensor. Guided, captured, stacked & stretched in MaximDL, combined and processed in Photoshop. Lee

I did , tried 3 different distances, ended up going with 45mm instead of 55mm think it was better but lost a bit of reduction so more like 0.7x I think. it only really notices in bottom left corner so may be a little tilt. But im really pushing it to its limits as its designed for smaller sensors like the 314, but im still pretty happy with it. Lee

Thanks for all the great comments, ive posted a lot of images over the years but never got such generous comments before so I must have done something right on this one 😛 cheers Lee

This is a test of the combination of my Atik460 CCD to see how it works with my ED70 refractor with extreme 0.6 focal reducer, ive used this reducer with my old smaller CCD with good results, but was expecting some coma on the corner stars with the larger sensor, but after some selective star shrinking in the corners it doesn't really notice. 8 X 10 mins in Ha with the Altair Starwave 70ED + Lightwave 0.6 reducer giving a very fast F3.6 at 250mm Focal Length in combination with my Atik460CCD. This image contains The Bubble Nebula, M52 Open Cluster, The Lobster Claw Nebula and the small bright nebula at bottom right is NGC7538. Overall im pretty happy with this setup, though I cant help wish I could use my other larger 383CCD to get a bit wider still. May need to make another purchase :-p.Guided, captured, stacked & stretched in MaximDL, combined and processed in Photoshop. Lee

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-fccs-approval-of-spacexs-starlink-mega-constellation-may-have-been-unlawful/

Rossette Bok Globules with Leaping Puma now in Colour. I started this on Dec 10th and finished on Friday night. 4 x 15 mins in Ha + 6 X 10 Mins in Oiii, captured with my Atik 460EX CCD & Meade 127mm F7.5 triplet refractor. Guided, captured, stacked & stretched in MaximDL, combined and processed in Photoshop.

whoops LOL, I think I posted it too late at night

Rossette Bok Globules with Leaping Puma now in Colour. I started this on Dec 10th and finished on Friday night. 4 x 15 mins in Ha + 6 X 10 Mins in Oiii, captured with my Atik 460EX CCD & Meade 127mm F7.5 triplet refractor. Guided, captured, stacked & stretched in MaximDL, combined and processed in Photoshop.

Deep dive on the Orion Nebula last night. This is 2hrs of data in Hydrogen Alpha comprising of 12 X 10 min + 30 x 30 secs to recover the core, with my Atik383 CCD & 102mm triplet at f5.5. I have stretched it to the noise limit to get as deep as possible, maybe at the expense of smoothness but I quite like it. Guided, captured, stacked and stretched in MaximDL, processed in Photoshop, No Darks or Flats, Only Bias . Not sure why but I notice when I post on here the dark parts of the image get very grainy, doesn't happen on FB which is opposite to what I would expect. oh well

Well done Dave. Lee

Lovely and sharp with plenty of detail Dave. Lee

Olly, was reading on another site that Bias frames can sometimes be affected by ambient temperature, in regards to the rest of the electronics on the board rather than the CCD itself. So maybe worth doing a new set of bias for when its very warm or cold. I was just trying your method of using Bias as darks with my recently purchased Atik383 and it indeed gives an identical result to using darks. even the ADU counts came in identical. I then tried just using Bias as Bias and the result was identical again. so not sure if I will us e bias as darks or just do bias as bias I can't see a difference either way. So for me Bias and dithering is definitely the way to go for my lazy style of imaging. Lee

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/science-environment-51049746?fbclid=IwAR1t8bUGZvLy-p05EUkaL6_7mFTQItOFGHmPNLhvih1xZkYbYFAeePlgmts