Rho Oph Borg71FL & QHY9 first light

[Mike Hawtin]

I've always wanted to have a bash at the Rho Oph/Antares area so what better subject to try for a lovely mosaic with my new scope and camera.  Ha!!  What a mug, really poor seeing at that altitude plus windy conditions and a broken stick on my streetlight snood knocked any such daft dreams right out of my head.  So here is second best, the northern pane only taken directly through the light dome of Limassol, pop 100,000, 11 miles from my location, and it still needs more data to smooth things out but there is only so much frustration I can take at any one time.

I hope you like it anyway, thanks for looking.

Mike

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Splendid image

[Gina]

Very nice indeed

[iksose7]

Very nice job! I'd be happy with that. I was trying for this area last night with a 200mm lens. It became obvious though that a tree line to the South was going to limit imaging. Will have to find somewhere else to shoot from if i want a proper go at it. 

[Mike Hawtin]

Thanks for the kind comments folks.  Callum I've just had a look at your flickr images, fantastic, I especially like the light ghost on the Ferrari!

[Barry-Wilson]

Great image Mike, lovely colour balance and pin sharp stars across the frame.

Barry

[carastro]

I absolutely love this area of sky and it is one I am part way through imaging.  

You have done a really great image Mike, I hope I can get close to that when I manage to get some more data.  (Only got Luminance so far).

Carole 

[Mike Hawtin]

Thanks Barry, Carole.  This is a subject I've always wanted to do and I am pretty happy with the result even if I did have to resample to 55% of the original due to the seeing bloated subs.

Mike

[x6gas]

That's a lovely result on a stunning object, Mike.  Congratulations!

[Mike Hawtin]

Thank you very much Ian.

[carastro]

Just noticed you are in Cyprus, so you will have a great advantage over me in the UK with this object.  I have seen the skies over the mountains there, they are awesome.

Carole 

[Mike Hawtin]

Yes Carole, the subject an extra 17 degrees or so of altitude compared to the UK which makes a huge difference.

Mike

[Coco]

Wow.. Mike that's a real treat, you should post the full size one, its gorgeous   

[Mike Hawtin]

Thanks Guy,  the full res image is not a pretty sight, quite apart from the guiding problems due to windy conditions and soft star images from the naff seeing the stars on the blue subs have horrendous bloating which I'm pretty sure is down to the Borg reducer corrector, I'm waiting on advice from Ted Ishikawa at Hutec to see if there is anything I can do about it but until then my images from this set up will have to be resampled right down to look anything like presentable.

Mike

[Mr Spock]

It's a fabulous area and you've captured the colours nicely.

[Mike Hawtin]

Thanks Michael.

[x6gas]

Thanks Guy,  the full res image is not a pretty sight, quite apart from the guiding problems due to windy conditions and soft star images from the naff seeing the stars on the blue subs have horrendous bloating which I'm pretty sure is down to the Borg reducer corrector, I'm waiting on advice from Ted Ishikawa at Hutec to see if there is anything I can do about it but until then my images from this set up will have to be resampled right down to look anything like presentable.

Mike

More likely a combination of the seeing and the filters isn't it?  Blue bends best and all that...

[Mike Hawtin]

Ted reckons it's because I'm not using a UV/IR blocking filter which has the cutoff line around 410nm and 420nm, so I'll be looking at getting an IDAS LPS filter or similar asap.  I honestly thought, naively perhaps, that good quality LRGB filters would be all I needed to use with a doublet astrograph having one fluorite element and a  reducer/corrector with three elements.  Ah well you live and learn.

Mike