Leo Triplet, with a Triplet

[Tim]

I am lucky enough to have on loan a Skywatcher Esprit 150ED.

Over the last few nights I have been getting acquainted with it.

Here is 30 x 900 of the Leo Triplet, taken over 3 nights. I don't have the best skies for OSC, so was pleased that this came out with just a simple stretch, and light High-pass filter. Must be the quickest I have ever processed an image, all of 3 minutes

Cheers

Tim

[Gasman]

Cracking image Tim!. Interested in what you think of the Espirit as I`m looking at the 120mm

Steve

[nytecam]

Tim - excellent Leo Triplet via OSC ... and you've got supernova SN 2013am too ;-)

[Matthew]

As always Tim very nice image.

[Tim]

Cracking image Tim!. Interested in what you think of the Espirit as I`m looking at the 120mm

Steve

As mentioned, I'm just getting used to it Steve, more used to reflecting telescoes, and OSC isn't familiar territory for me either, so I have switched to my mono 460ex now. I rolled through the par focal Baader LRGB filters last night, and going by the matching FWHM figures the colour correction looks very good indeed. The suppplied flattener also seems to do a good job, stars are clean and round all the way out. I'll keep posting pics as I get them, but I will say one thing, the more I use the Esprit, the more I want one

[MikeD]

Very nice detail Tim.

Mike.

[ollypenrice]

M66 in particular is showing some very fine detail. I think this looks promising. Also the stars are nicely shaped across the chip and the scope seems to be coping well with that bright star, which has a tenedency to bloat easily in the refractors I've used.

I think that if you get the Atik on it the colour will be transformed. There are quite a few blue stars in this field which have not shown their real colour yet.

Olly

[Tim]

The stars were a lot tighter on the Atik Olly, and spinning through the filter wheel just quickly, the FWHM values were all very close. Some really bright stars have a halo, but I think that is the Astronomik CLS filter, their anti reflection coatings seem to be on the dodgy side.

I really want to get stuck into some decent narrowband targets, but they are sparse at the moment from my location.

[Gina]

Excellent image Tim I got halos with Astronomik clip filters when I was 1100D imaging too. I know they are supposed to have fixed that in their later filters but I have my doubts.

That sounds a wondeful scope - pity about the price, but that's one tremendous amount of great quality glass in there. My ED80 is parfocal too with the Baader LRGB filters which is so useful as I can run LRGBLRGB sequence as long as seeing conditions permit. Having recently acquired a new (to me) MN190, I'm dying to try that too - I think it should be great

[Tim]

The Baader filters are as close to parfocal as damnit in the MN190 Gina. I'd still recommend a periodic check of course. You'll see a tiny bit of separation between the blue and red filters.

[Coco]

The Baader filters are as close to parfocal as damnit in the MN190 Gina. I'd still recommend a periodic check of course. You'll see a tiny bit of separation between the blue and red filters.

Agreed LRGB, even the HA is near as damnit also..

Nice image Tim..

[andyo]

Great image Tim

[sologuitarist61]

Beautiful