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Simeis 147 in Ha - 314L+ with SMC Takumar 55mm f1.8 lens

Gina

By Gina
in Imaging - Deep Sky

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Gina

Gina

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Imaging this fascinating DSO tonight with Atik 314L+ mono CCD camera and SMC Takumar 55mm f1.8 lens with 5nm Ha filter. Guiding with ST80, QHY5 and PHD (working sometimes :D). This is a single 10m sub stretched in PS.

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James

James

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Hopefully you're getting more subs!!

I was out but after being called in for the umpteenth time by one 5 year old son with a sore mouth I gave up... Have the clouds completely cleared from where you are Gina, I'm still getting some here and I reckon I'm less than 10 miles away from you (in the direction of the Exeter glow...

James

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Gina

Gina

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Hopefully you're getting more subs!!

Yes, I think so :D I've lost guiding a couple of time which has spoilt a couple of subs and the last one was spoilt because I didn't have the roof wide open enough - silly me :D This stuff needs keeping a close eye on!
I was out but after being called in for the umpteenth time by one 5 year old son with a sore mouth I gave up... Have the clouds completely cleared from where you are Gina, I'm still getting some here and I reckon I'm less than 10 miles away from you (in the direction of the Exeter glow...

James

The clouds seem to have completely cleared but maybe a couple of rogue clouds sneeked past me and clobbered the guiding. Sorry about your son's sore mouth - hope it clears up soon :)

We can't see the glow from Exeter here - there's a hill in the way - but we can see the glow from Honiton.

I'm using TeamViewer to keep and eye of proceedings in my shed from indoors - great software.

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swag72

swag72

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That's a difficult target Gina and you are doing very well. This is my all time favourite target and one that I hope to capture, but it's rather tricky with a scope. Even at 352mm and with my 460EX it will take a mosaic of a few panes. One day I'll get round to it! Ss well done for having a go. Keep going as a mountain of subs will help the noise no end.

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Martin-Devon

Martin-Devon

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Hi Gina, that's a good start and really impressive that you've got it in all one frame - especially with an Atik 314/DSLR lens combo! It's a huge target and very faint indeed. I've also started this one, it's my project for when the Moon is up since it's all H-alpha work. So far I've got 6x10min subs with my Atik460 and stacked these, see the image attached - I'm going to need at least 4 frames in a mosaic to get all of this in though, so I really envy your single frame set-up, without the need to go to the huge 11,000 CCDs. Look forward to seeing your progress on ths one.

Martin

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Gina

Gina

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That's a difficult target Gina and you are doing very well. This is my all time favourite target and one that I hope to capture, but it's rather tricky with a scope. Even at 352mm and with my 460EX it will take a mosaic of a few panes. One day I'll get round to it! Ss well done for having a go. Keep going as a mountain of subs will help the noise no end.

Thank you Sara :) Yes, many panes with a scope, for sure. This wide field setup is working really well. It's rather nice to be giving a new lease of life to the standard lens I had with my Asahi Pentax Spotmatic film SLR. It got a lot of use many decades ago and I took some great photos with it. I'l take a photo of my setup later and post it here,
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Gina

Gina

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Hi Gina, that's a good start and really impressive that you've got it in all one frame - especially with an Atik 314/DSLR lens combo! It's a huge target and very faint indeed. I've also started this one, it's my project for when the Moon is up since it's all H-alpha work. So far I've got 6x10min subs with my Atik460 and stacked these, see the image attached - I'm going to need at least 4 frames in a mosaic to get all of this in though, so I really envy your single frame set-up, without the need to go to the huge 11,000 CCDs. Look forward to seeing your progress on ths one.

Martin

Thank you Martin :) That's a magnificent start you've made there.

This is first light in AP for this lens. I'm using the standard 55mm f1.8 lens off my Pentax Spotmatic film SLR camera that I bought second hand back in the 60s (I think) Compared with my scope's minimum FL of 510mm, 55mm is very wide angle - it covers 9x7 degrees - a huge chunk of sky :) It's also nice to be using less than f2 - yes I'm using it wide open!

It looks a bit odd on the much larger filter wheel and camera but performs beautifully. Of course it's only an achromat and only corrected for blue and green as usual for a terrestrial camera lens. Blue and green filters come out parfocal but not red or Ha and focussing for individual filters is required. I have a remote operated motor drive to the focussing sleeve of the lens so this is not a problem. I use FWHM in Artemis Capture to get the stars down to pixel size. The performance of this lens is quite spectacular. No coverage trouble of course, with such a small sensor compared with the full-frame SLR of 36mm x 24mm and the 6 micron pixel size is a fair bit bigger than the grain in film.

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Gina

Gina

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Great start Gina,

This is a tough object. Good luck!

Mark

Thank you Mark :) I was so impressed with the beauty of Les Tilly's image that I though I MUST try that. I checked his equipment and exposures and thought it was worth trying. With under f2 compared with f5 and a great camera and proven fine lens I thought I had a pretty fair chance. And I love a challenge, of course :D
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Gina

Gina

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Can you go longer on your subs Gina? its a 5nm filter so at least 20 to 30 min subs would help a lot

Les

I stopped at 10m because the brightest star was just below the 65535 ADU level but I'm thinking I might let that overexpose and deal with it in PS. I gather you used f5 and I used f1.8 - that's pretty close to 3 stops faster ie. 8x in terms of exposure. So my 10m subs equate to 80m at f5, if my maths is right. Actually I had a fair amount of finger trouble last night and lost quite a lot of time. I guess it's lack of familiarity with everything due to all the bad weather we've had :( I had over 5 hours before the mist came in around midnight and all I got was a mere dozen 10m subs and a few dozen very short RGB for the star colours.

Tonight is forecast as partly cloudy so may not be any good for long subs buy tomorrow night is forecast as clear up till midnight. I'll try longer subs.

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Gina

Gina

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Perhaps a bit of explanation would be appropriate for those who haven't read my thread about my dual scope mounting system...

I have an Evostar ED80 imaging scope and an ST80 guide scope. These are mounted on an aluminium plate which is bolted to the dovetail. The wide-field system is mounted using a home modified scope ring converted to a guide scope type ring with adjusting bolts. This is mounted on one of the camera mounting points on a scope ring on the ST80. The focus motor/gearbox is mounted on another plate fastened to the ED80 camers mount points. I intend to replace this arrangement with a plate that connects all the camera mounting points, for extra stability. The DC motor will be replaced with a stepper motor run from an Arduino, later.

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Gina

Gina

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The sky seems clear tonight to the eay but I'm not getting anything of Simies 147 :( Plenty of stars and a gradient across the frame. OK I know there's a moon but this is 5nm Ha and the moon is well away from the field of view. Maybe I'll try something else.

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