Avalon FIrst Light

[ollypenrice]

This is a first light for the TEC140 mounted on a new Avalon Linear Fast Reverse supplied by Ian King. The camera is an Atik 11000 mono. The plan is to shoot an Ha layer for the fainter background gasses linking the nebulae and to tighten up the structures seen in the Lagoon. Considering the relatively light data I have to say I'm happy. This had 8x10 minutes per colour and just 2x15 minutes in Luminance. I extracted a synthetic L from the RGB and combined it with the real L to reduce noise.

This was taken with guest Paul over two nights, one of them the shortest of the year.

Crops;

Olly

Edit, I forgot to show you the beast. Here we go;

[ChrisLX200]

Wow! and so good you need to post it twice   Seriously impressive Olly.

ChrisH

[swag72]

A super image Olly - A seriously pleasing first light, you must be chuffed to bits. Short of data in your eyes it may be, but this is looking very sweet indeed.

[ollypenrice]

Wow! and so good you need to post it twice   Seriously impressive Olly.

ChrisH

A senior moment!!!

lly

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Great images, mount looks lovely too.

I'll remove the duplicate

[dazza1639]

Amazing Olly I guess the dark sky gods are being good to you down there. If I do more than 5 mins I get completely washed out

Darren

@SalAstroSoc & @astronut1639

www.salfordastro.org.uk

[ollypenrice]

Amazing Olly I guess the dark sky gods are being good to you down there. If I do more than 5 mins I get completely washed out

Darren

@SalAstroSoc & @astronut1639

www.salfordastro.org.uk

Yes, it's amazing how going even a short distance south improves your hours of darkness in summer. We have four hours of astronomical darkness on the shortest night but we're only a day's drive from London. 

The targets are so good at this time of year as well, right down south in the Milky Way.

Olly

[dazza1639]

Even in darkest winter I could only push about 6 to 7 mins before the dub is washed out, my light pollution is awful I'm only a couple of miles from Manchester City centre with a flood lit golf driving range ( lights on until 2:30am) and the Trafford centre (lights on all night) both less than 1/2 a mile away [emoji45]

Darren

@SalAstroSoc & @astronut1639

www.salfordastro.org.uk

[sloz1664]

Hi Darren,

Are you using any LPS filter measures?

Steve

[iksose7]

Excellent first light Olly, looks like the Avalon will serve you well! Only downside is now your rig looks like the French flag

[ollypenrice]

Excellent first light Olly, looks like the Avalon will serve you well! Only downside is now your rig looks like the French flag

Hehheh, true, and someone on the French forum just said the same. I hadn't thought of that!

Olly

[ollypenrice]

Browsing the Avalon pages of Optique Underlinden's site in French I've just noticed that they recommend a guide rate of 0.125 sidereal. I've been using the default of 0.5 so I'll try slowing it down.

Olly 

[dazza1639]

Hi Darren,

Are you using any LPS filter measures?

Steve

Yes I've tried different ones it's the actual brightness of the sky the frame ends up with the histogram extending all the way to the right and the sun ends up almost completely white at about 10mins, the glow of the flood lights from the playgolf centre can be seen from 10miles away and because they are white it is very difficult to filter them out as the spectrum spread is very wide

Darren

@SalAstroSoc & @astronut1639

www.salfordastro.org.uk

[Mr Spock]

I saw the Avalon close up at IAS. It is a thing of beauty I want one!

[StuartJPP]

Looks very good Olly, those stars on the guide graph look nice and tightly packed...

[ollypenrice]

Looks very good Olly, those stars on the guide graph look nice and tightly packed...

They're not stars, exactly, they are the position of the mount at the time of the latest guide correction. They represent the calculated centroid of the guide star. But, yes, pretty good. 

Olly

[Singlin]

Congratulations!

Spectacular and a great combination of equipment.

[Baffa]

Looks great!

The mount performs just as good as it looks. :-)

Sent from Xperia Z1 using Tapatalk.

[gingergeek]

Yummy image, must get my backside down to the South of France for some much needed tuition.

[x6gas]

Excellent first light Olly and more ammunition to challenge my selection of the CEM60 over Avalon LineAR... not that either mount can help with the cloud and rain!

[fwm891]

Great mount Olly - enjoy (I'm enjoying mine)

[ollypenrice]

Thanks everyone. A second panel and an Ha layer are in the pipeline.

Olly

[Gina]

WOW!!!  That's amazing!

[PNJ]

great shot, love the colours,  well done,   its nice to see everyone wants one now,  i remember just under 2 years ago when i got mine, a lot of people on here were calling it, saying it was just another eq6 clone, I'm glad you got one now and proved them wrong, sorry guys

Paul J

[PNJ]

Hi Olly,

i got the Avalon extension, that raises the mount about 8 inches, it stops long refractors from hitting the tripod leg when equipped with a long imaging train.

cheers

Paul J