Imaging with the 130pds

[Stub Mandrel]

Quick and dirty drizzle of the Whale Galaxy from last night's 130P-DS image. Surprised how effective the drizzle was, but a bit noisy:

 

[vernmid]

Morning all,

Pleased with this M51 from Star Wars day on May the 4th.

130PDS + HEQ5 + 1100d modified + 80mm ASI120MM Guiding

40 * 240s subs + Bias and Flats

Comments welcome ?

Here's a wider uncropped version. I think I prefer this one

 

 

Edited May 7, 2019 by vernmid

[Stub Mandrel]

7 hours ago, vernmid said:

130PDS + HEQ5 + 1100d modified + 80mm ASI120MM Guiding

40 * 240s subs + Bias and Flats

Much better faint stuff than I can get, I envy your skies!

[Greymouser]

It is that sort of image vernmid, that makes me want to dip my toes in the imaging part of the hobby. My wallet keeps saying: NOOOOO!

[mAnKiNd]

After almost two long years of wanting this scope, having backordered one which never showed up two summers ago and much time spent reading through this magnificent thread...I finally got me a 130PDS!

Gratitude to all the people who have contributed to this topic and kind thanks to FLO for sending me one to New York, as SW doesn't offer this line here in the states.

First light details here:

https://www.astrobin.com/404973/

Clear Skies and wishes to you all for the best

Minos

[Susaron]

4 hours ago, mAnKiNd said:

After almost two long years of wanting this scope, having backordered one which never showed up two summers ago and much time spent reading through this magnificent thread...I finally got me a 130PDS!

Gratitude to all the people who have contributed to this topic and kind thanks to FLO for sending me one to New York, as SW doesn't offer this line here in the states.

First light details here:

https://www.astrobin.com/404973/

Clear Skies and wishes to you all for the best

Minos

Wellcome to the community. 

[Uranium235]

On 30/04/2019 at 20:49, JohnSadlerAstro said:

 

Have you checked if the jet correct? If it is - im impressed! Jets are something i've been trying to capture for years...lol. I dont think I have a close up of that galaxy in my archive, so I'll have to get some fresh data while i still can.

It might be worth me getting the 178 on that for some close-up action... and possibly enhance the jet slightly with some creative layer masking in Ps.

[Stub Mandrel]

Went back to my Markarian data for April 18.

M87 in the bottom left corner of a fairly small number of subs.

Nowhere near as clear as John's pic, but it is visible:

[Stub Mandrel]

After a bit of deconvolution of the previous pic in Astra Image... I give you a relativistic jet out of a black hole! Wow!

[alacant]

Hi everyone

Not had the little 130 out for too long. We used an old eos 450d which a visitor had brought along. It made an interesting comparison with our 700d. The 450 seems more sensitive -we took 4 minute frames- perhaps at the expense of noise. Has anyone done a dslr sensitivity comparison I wonder...

Thanks for looking and any 450d users do share your experiences...

 

 

[Stub Mandrel]

I use a 450D, modded and cooled.

It's much better than a modded uncooled 10D, I can't say much more!

[JohnSadlerAstro]

On 11/05/2019 at 23:12, Uranium235 said:

Have you checked if the jet correct? If it is - im impressed! Jets are something i've been trying to capture for years...lol. I dont think I have a close up of that galaxy in my archive, so I'll have to get some fresh data while i still can.

It might be worth me getting the 178 on that for some close-up action... and possibly enhance the jet slightly with some creative layer masking in Ps.

Hi,

It's something I definitely wasn't expecting! The jet is in the correct direction though, and is in the opposite direction to the coma. It's also strongly luminous in the blue.

I would suggest disregarding the standard method of taking short (<1min) subs, my ones were 120 and 200 sec, at iso800, I believe. It's quite possible to get the galaxy core + jet without too much clipping. 

Good luck!

John

[Adam J]

So I decided to place a aperture mask over my 130pds primary mirror, I did this so that I would get tighter better star halos without the very edge of the mirror (usually the worst part of the grind / polish) and without the mirror clips. 

The mask is 123mm in diamiter meaning that I loose 6mm of mirror (yes 6mm) as the 130PDS has a 129mm mirror if you measure the thing. 

When taking into account my coma corrector (TS Max Field) that has a reduction factor of 0.95x leaving me with a focal length of  618mm this gives a F-ratio of  F 5.02 so back where I started before masking when i used to use a Baader MPCC MK3

Following initial testing I am pleased with the results with bright stars in luminance being much more tidy. 

I also blackened the edges and bevel on my secondary mirror. 

Ill post some comparison images when available. 

Adam 

Edited May 16, 2019 by Adam J

[rotatux]

Some recently processed-during-rain images taken from february (yes I take my time :) )

First is my first acceptable horse head and flame ... at least I think so, since previous attempts didn't have enough signal. An EQ mount changes the game (coming from Alt-Az) by allowing to regularly break the 30s barrier. No darks or flats so it has some dust mites which didn't show with alt-az (because that latter moves erratically), so I should remember to regularly switch off/on the camera to let the auto-cleaning supersonic waves to move them.

Second is my first HDR, with M42 as classic subject. Came out nicely out of a relatively short exposure, and /me/ being still junior and maybe underequipped at processing.

Both captured with Olympus E-PL6 on 130PDS with SW CC and dydimium filter on Omegon EQ-300 tracking RA from a sky 50km from Paris, France (Bortle ~ 4), processed with Regim 3.4 and Fotoxx 12.01+.

What do you think ?

Exposure: 12 × 60s × 2500iso.

Exposure: 19 × 10s × 2000iso + 10 × 30s × 3200iso + 6 × 60s × 2500iso (total 14mn)

[Adam J]

On 13/01/2016 at 22:29, Uranium235 said:

This is what I mean by a bespoke, all M48 threaded solution (with internally mounted CC and tilt adjustment):

Its not the kind of thing you can buy off the shelf, you have to buy the separate components and fit them together yourself (requires a bench drill, taps and small countersunk hex screws). Bonus being it can be fitted to any 2" skywatcher newtonian focuser, so you can chop and change at will - and it opens up threaded collimation, which is far more repeatable and reliable (though you do need to remember to remove the CC first.... otherwise its metal on glass... not good!).

However.... there is another way you can have an internally mounted CC (though it has to be the Baader), and that is to get a dovetail pushfit adaptor - which would be much better than the straight barrel versions. This one has a 2" fiilter thread scope side, so that is where you would situate your CC. Reason why I said it needs to be Baader is because you can remove the T thread component, just leaving an M48 cell (which is what is inside my adaptor).

http://www.teleskop-express.de/shop/product_info.php/info/p2742_TS-Optics-Adaptor-2--to-T2---low-profile---dovetail.html

The only downside to that is its only available in a T2 camera side fitting, so you would need a T2-M48 adaptor to get it to fit your filter wheel (and losing a bit more spacing to play with in the process).

Rob I have looked at this a couple of times over the last year and I always wonder how you control camera rotation with this setup. Also how do you colimate?

Edited May 17, 2019 by Adam J

[Stub Mandrel]

1 hour ago, rotatux said:

so I should remember to regularly switch off/on the camera to let the auto-cleaning supersonic waves to move them.

Most folks switch this off so they stay put and use flat frames instead.

 

Nice horsey 🙂

[Susaron]

Markarian Chain with reviewed color correction.

 

[Adam J]

1 hour ago, Susaron said:

Markarian Chain with reviewed color correction.

 

Nice detail in the galaxies, just a shame about the background, have you used flats? Or is this just a moon related issue?

[Susaron]

10 hours ago, Adam J said:

Nice detail in the galaxies, just a shame about the background, have you used flats? Or is this just a moon related issue?

The flats I did created a red background, and the color correction given by pix was almost brown. So I processed without flats.

[Stub Mandrel]

5 hours ago, Susaron said:

The flats I did created a red background, and the color correction given by pix was almost brown. So I processed without flats.

I took the liberty of grabbing the image and putting it through Gradient Exterminator; this is a jpg so expect better quality if you do it yourself:

Edit: Bottom centre you can see what happens if you don't mask off a bright DSO before using Gradex...

Edited May 18, 2019 by Stub Mandrel

[alacant]

16 hours ago, Susaron said:

reviewed color correction

Hi. Great shot. I had a go at the stars and took down the red a bit.

Salu2

[rotatux]

On 17/05/2019 at 17:50, Stub Mandrel said:

Most folks switch this off so they stay put and use flat frames instead.

My camera can't disable that auto-clean feature. And, the dust on my sensor as I checked it seems totally opaque, so I don't think flats would take care of it (or badly); "Capture dithering" in my setup would be more complicated than just a power cycle every now and then. I'm half surprised that flats work so well with others, but seeing some flats shown here I saw most dust is transparent contrary to mine (because of my smaller pixels ?).

That moving dust might also explain why I failed to make working flats so far :-/ but living well without them as you see :)

[Uranium235]

On 17/05/2019 at 16:39, Adam J said:

Rob I have looked at this a couple of times over the last year and I always wonder how you control camera rotation with this setup. Also how do you colimate?

You have some degree of control over the rotation (prior to attaching camera) by simply taking out the screws on the tilt adjuster and rotating it in portions of 120deg, if you get it close, the rest of the camera orientation is finished by tweaking up the tightness of the extention rings (not too tight though... dont want to bind them). Its kinda arbitrary, but Ive never failed to get the camera landsacpe or portrait with it (in repect to the focuser).

Collimation is done simply by removing the corrector (it screws out). Or... if you have a short cheshire in your box you can just leave the CC in, attach an EP holder to the M48 thread and off you go... but I do stress that it needs to be a short cheshire - otherwise you will hear the glorious sound of metal on glass... not good!

[Uranium235]

On 13/05/2019 at 08:03, JohnSadlerAstro said:

Hi,

It's something I definitely wasn't expecting! The jet is in the correct direction though, and is in the opposite direction to the coma. It's also strongly luminous in the blue.

I would suggest disregarding the standard method of taking short (<1min) subs, my ones were 120 and 200 sec, at iso800, I believe. It's quite possible to get the galaxy core + jet without too much clipping. 

Good luck!

John

Just working on it now mate (its been a while since I last got out).

But.... ive just checked the first sub (240s) and bingo... its there!! my first (intentional) jet!

I'll leave the camera running for an hour or two - just for the sake of nose reduction - and hoovering up some background fuzzies. Im getting a few unexpected bumps in RA guiding though, no idea why becuase there is absolutely no wind our there tonight.

[Uranium235]

There ya go... M87 jet from the 130:

Crop