mftoet

The following was just posted by John Kroon on Astrobin: I see several pictures from the HLA and they're beautiful, but I have a question. Why do people just snag data from the archive and process it? Isn't it a bit too far removed from the craft? You know, like setting up your gear, calibrating everything, framing the shot, taking exposures and all that, and then processing the data the next day. Isn't that what this is all about? Grabbing data off of the HLA seems like it wouldn't feel like astrophotography anymore. I've never tried. I don't mean to be rude, but I'm just curious about how people decided to do HLA processing only. And how fulfilling it may or may not be. For example, if I were to ever log-on to a remote site and click the mouse a few times and have data in the morning, even that would sort of feel like a let down. And here comes the part that sums it up for me: There's no substitute for being out under a clear dark sky in the thicket of it all! To let your eyes dark adapt as you scan the heavens while your rig loops through exposures to to be immersed in that calm chilly night air with nothing other than yourself and the Universe…where all worries and stress of your job and finances and relationships melt away and it's just peaceful calm beauty. You sort of let yourself go and become part of the night. Another shadow drifting under the cool glowing light from the early fall Milky Way. For me the field work is way more important than the processing part. Maybe that’s because I can only spend a few days a year (a total amount of maybe 3 weeks at most) at a dark sky location (such as Olly’s). Due to excessive light pollution (assimilation lights to cultivate flowers and vegetables) the sky at home is terrible. I cannot enjoy the splendour of the night sky at home and neither in a 100 km radius. (I feel sorry for the children growing up in large cities. They might never witness the splendour of the Milky Way, but that’s another discussion.) Traveling to a dark site packed with all my gear after thorough preparation of what to image and how to compose the field of view must be like a scuba diver traveling to coral reef instead of diving in a local, muddy pond or going to a deep sea aquarium to admire coral and sea live from behind glass. Another reason is that I started astrophotography using (slide) film. No processing back then. Your image was either sharp (well focused and guided), nicely framed, exposed long enough and free of airplane and bright satellite trails or the opposite. For me an important part of processing is in the first place to see if everything in the field went well and what improvements or adjustments might have to be made to deal with errors or to get even better results the next time. I dare say most of us enjoy continuously optimising their gear (also by acquiring new and better equipment / accessories) and simply being busy with it under the stars. Proper data (acquired under a 21+ magn. sky) are easier to process than data acquired under (heavy) light polluted skies. Your nebulae are there instead of having to separate them from noise that almost has the same intensity (signal) as the nebula you’re after. Normally I don’t spend more than 2 hours on post-processing an image (including gradient removal; cleaning the background) captured at a dark site.

The Lacerta MGEN can guide in RA only. I’ve been using one for about 7 years now and I’m very content with it. In fact, I love it! It also controls the camera (Canon and Nikon DSLRs, not sure about other brands) as a remote shutter and it supports dithering which is essential for reducing noise patterns when using a DSLR. Stay away from the Synguider and LVI smartguider. I don’t have first hand experience with these standalone autoguider, but I’ve heard a lot of people struggling in order to get theme to work. There’s a new interesting player on the market developed by a Dutch team of astrophotographers: the StarAid. Check staraid.ai for info. It is quite an expensive unit though and it doesn’t support camera control and dithering yet. If you plan to use the StarAdventurer for wide field imaging only (lenses with a focal length of 85 mm max) you probably don’t have to (auto)guide. Just take extra time for proper polar alignment.

True. The blue dot is where I live. See what's due south of me?

That is probably an issue you have to consider indeed. Now you mentioned it: in the end I used the Borg 101ED in its native f/6.4 configuration with a minus violet filter. From what I've heard, the Pentax 100 SDUF II isn't so good for digital photography for the reason you mentioned. That's probably why Vixen redesigned it and added an extra lens.

One of the many refractors + correctors, extenders and reducers of Borg / Astro Hutech might be the answer. I once owned a Borg 101ED that covered Medium Format. I used it with a Mamiya 645 camera. http://www.sciencecenter.net/hutech/borg/astrogr/index.htm You can also keep an eye out for secondhand Pentax refractors from the analogue age. Remember that "full frame" (35mm) coverage was the standard back then.

INTES MK-69 (Photographic Sigler Mak).

My e-180 on Mach1.

@Olly: Dutch is listed in "my" version of Google Translate and translates the sentence to: Great beautiful plate! You have done a tremendous job! Close enough to the actual meaning ;-) Dutch is probably listed as 'Nederlands' in "your" version of Google Translate.

Geweldig mooie plaat! Jullie hebben een fantastische prestatie geleverd! I assume you understand some Dutch by now; the "G-s" and "Ch" are pronounced like the G in Gouda - like a choking sound - which I've heard you pronounce so well. ;-)

Incredible accomplishment!