Widefield Triple Imaging Rig

[Gina]

Thank you Mark There's plenty of Ha but the OIII and SII are pretty faint. Have a go at it - anything is worth trying and if you succeed with a difficult object it's even more of a feather in your cap I love trying the difficult ones.

I had a problem with guiding and the hour long OIII and SII subs were mostly failures. I'll post the Ha stack and some OIII and SII images shortly.

[Gina]

Here are the subs stacked in DSS and stretched in Ps etc. 17 x 20m Ha, 4 x 60m OIII, 4 x 60m SII plus a single SII of 60m that seemed to excape the worst problems with guiding though still has elongated stars.

I don't think it's worth trying to combine these into a colour image. The forecast is for clear skies all night tonight so if that "comes to pass" I'll have another go.

[Quatermass]

Yepeee clear sky's=no sleep

cloud cloud go away come again another day

[Gina]

Sky's looking good tonight so I'm all set up again for imaging IC 1396 with the same 20m Ha and an hour on OIII and SII.

[Gina]

First 20m single Ha sub...

[Gina]

And now the one hour first subs of OIII and SII stretched in Ps.

Still getting oblong stars but it's better than it was. I think I could do with a separate set of images for the stars in RGB. Or I could remove the stars from the OIII and SII and convert the Ha stars to white. I will have to learn more processing skills to produce better stars. Whether it would make sense to add natural palette stars to Hubble Palette nebulae I'm not sure. Maybe I'll try removing the stars altogether as I've seen in some other people's images.

[Gina]

Today I took sets of flats for the present setup which covers IC 1396 and the Heart & Soul Nebulae - I have not touched the focus on any camera nor the alignment nor camera angles since setting up for the H&S. Focus has remained around 1.5 FWHM for the 314s and 2-3 for the 460. I have added these to the lights but not finished processing yet.

It occurred to me that, though these Atik cameras are very low noise and in most cases don't need darks, when exposures get up to the order of an hour for each sub I wonder if this is pushing it. So overnight tonight I running darks. 20m on the 460EX and 60m each on the 314L+s as for the lights. I've only got one 20m sub as yet but this did show some noise when stretched in Ps. I'll post the results tomorrow.

[Gina]

The darks certainly showed some noise - around 400-500 ADU -- with the hot pixels, of course. I'll post some samples shortly, meanwhile here's the lights stacked in DSS with darks and flats, aligned and resized in RegiStar and combined in Ps as SII > red, Ha > green and OIII to blue with histograms stretched but not yet aligned. I'm posting as JPEG as this doiesn't seem to be corrupting the image noticeably.

[Davey-T]

Good work Gina, an inspiration to us all.

Wondering why your post number has stalled on 15670 ?

Dave

[Gina]

Good work Gina, an inspiration to us all.

Wondering why your post number has stalled on 15670 ?

Dave

Thank you very much Dave

I hadn't noticed that my post count had stalled

[Gina]

Well, it's going again now

[Gina]

Here are the individual stacks, tweaked in Ps, resized for upload here and saved as JPEG for faster download. I think adding flats and darks has improved the result quite a bit. I still need to do some more work on the stars though but I'm beginning to learn a few techniques The Ha seems fine and I've been working on the stars in the OIII and have achieved a small improvement. Now the SII needs similar processing. Once I've done that I shall have another go at the Hubble Palette colour version. (The present incarnation is decidedly weird )

[Davey-T]

Well, it's going again now

Now it's stuck on 15688

Dave

[Gina]

Is it?

[Steve 1962]

Nope - I see 15,690!

Great thread Gina and lovely images - well done!

Steve

[Davey-T]

Is it?

OK, Just ignore me, think I'm having a senior moment

Dave

[Gina]

Nope - I see 15,690!

Great thread Gina and lovely images - well done!

Steve

thank you

[Gina]

OK, Just ignore me, think I'm having a senior moment

Dave

I seem to get those a lot these days

[Gina]

Done some more processing on the SII image and combined all three as SHO ready for Hubble treatment.

[Gina]

Hubble palette processed.

[Horwig]

Hi Gina, love the idea of a multi camera rig, I never seem to get any image finished, so the idea of hitting loads of subs in parallel  appeals. It's been nearly a year since your last post, are you still using it?

Huw

[Gina]

Unfortunately not   If I had had 3 identical cameras it would have been better but with one 460EX and two 314L+ mono cameras there were problems with matching up the images.  But the real problem was umpteen months of bad weather.  Then there were more personal problems which took a lot of my time.  I might get back to it - I still have the gear   There is also the possibility of using the 460EX on either the MN190 or Esprit 80ED and using the two 314L+ cameras as a dual imaging rig on a second pier which I'm setting up outside.  This will have the NEQ6 mount while the main rig uses the EQ8.  I have a number of things I want to try out with the second rig.  This will be for widefield imaging.  I have yet to decide what I want to do first

I have quite a large number of projects on the go as you probably know

[Earl]

Jessun has a triple rig running now.

http://www.progressiveastroimaging.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=9412

Its a good idea, Personally my triple rig will be a multipurpose rig rather than a photon gatherer, both have merits.

[LukeSkywatcher]

Jessun has a triple rig running now.

http://www.progressiveastroimaging.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=9412

Its a good idea, Personally my triple rig will be a multipurpose rig rather than a photon gatherer, both have merits.

I had wondered what happened to Gina's triple imaging system. Glad to see its up and running. I think if you are going to have a triple imaging system then it should be multi-purpose. 

[Gina]

I guess my aim should be to collect enough funds to have three 460EX mono CCD cameras.  The 314L+ just doesn't "cut the mustard" compared with the 460EX.  I have yet to see how my finances are going to work out now that there's only my pension as income.  Some household costs are reduced though so a slight mitigating factor there.  OTOH the property has suffered from lack of maintenance for the last few years and that will cost even though I'm providing the labour myself.