Lodestar Life in New England

[Dom543]

Hi All,

Every autumn I spend four months working in Massachusetts. Just outside of Boston and 3000 miles from home. To fill my lonely nights and make good use of the crisp but often clear autumn nights, I keep some astro equipment in my office here. After the building empties for the night, I usually set it up on one of the exterior steel balconies. I am perched above the street lights below and also above most of the trees. But the wall of the building blocks the view of half of the sky. There are, actually, two balconies, one of the South side of the building and another almost identical one on the North side. So I can pick which side of the sky I want to see.

The photo below shows my Meade 8" f/6.3 OTA on a Celestron AGST mount. I have a JMI-NGS electric focuser so that I can set the fine focus from a distance with a hand set. (It would be difficult to set accurate focus, while standing and moving around on the steel structure.) The Vixen flip mirror has a two-stage focal reducer inside and I am sure that you recognize my shiny new Lodestar X2c. My computer and chair is 4' from the scope on the solid floor of the inside of the building.

--Dom

[Dom543]

Below is the Bubble nebula (Caldwell 11) as captured yesterday night. It is not as nice as Don's shot from Hawaii. But, as said, I am just outside of Boston and we had a bright 3/4 gibbous Moon yesterday night. The shot is from the North side balcony, that is shaded from the direct moonshine by he building. I also used an IDAS LP2 filter. The f/3 focal ratio results in a rather small object and my tracking was less than perfect.

This was my first attempt to use sum stacking in LodestarLive. Thank you to Martin and Don for the suggestion and thank you Paul for having implemented sum-stacking in LL. It does, in fact, give a better image, than mean stacking for this particular object. On the screen one could faintly see the entire circular perimeter of the bubble and also quite a bit of faint nebulosity in an extended area around the main feature. I may try to run the image through some processing software to try to bring out the max detail. The photo below is what I got straight from LL.

I am not sure, why my Bubble turned out pink/magenta. Most of the images that I have seen showed a yellish-brownich nebula. The IDAS filter has the reputation of fairly good color fidelity. Nevertheless, the green histogram was consistently lagging behind the red and blue ones. It needed additional brightening of the green channel to reach color equilibrium.

--Dom

[Dave In Vermont]

Regardless of the slight color-lag, that a very nice image. Especially for being just outside of Boston. I can see the Charles River in the background - my guess is either Charlestown or Cambridge (I'm originally from Cambridge). I'll be doing a bit of research on the Lodestar. I just acquired a MallinCam Jr PRO I'm sorting. Nice to see what these cams can do in various settings/light-pollution. 

As an certified filter-nut, looks like the IDAS is pretty good! I don't have one of those - Yet.

Clear & Dark Autumn Skies,

Dave

[HiloDon]

Hi Dom,

I second Dave's comments. Your setup is the first I've seen on a fire escape. Your scope is a Meade 6.3. Your image caption reads f3. Do you have a FR installed? Thanks, Dom, for sharing. Your postings have been very helpful to me and, I'm sure, to others.

Don

[Martin Meredith]

Nice one Dom! Its great to see the boundaries being pushed and observing from inside your office building certainly does that, and why not? What I like about sensor-assisted observing is not just that it allows us to see much much deeper, but it multiplies the number of opportunities to see much in the way of DSOs at all compared to pure visual.

I'm guessing the colour-cast is mainly due to not quite achieving the right balance since it can be seen in the further reaches of the star field and not only the nebula. Having said that, some of my shots of this object do have a distinct pinky feel, though the bubble part itself tends to be golden.

Looking forward to more pics from the fire escape!

Martin

[Dom543]

Thank you for the comments and encouragement. I looked up the photo of the Bubble in one of my favorite target selection guides: Ruben Kier, "The 100 Best Astrophotography Targets". The nebula and the surrounding nebulosity is bright red on that image. That makes me feel better about my bright pink.

Please don't get me into trouble by calling my steel utility balcony a fire escape. I also posted my setup on Cloudy Nights and termed it "Fire Escape Observatory". Half an hour later I got a PM from a certified engineer in California with a link to Massachusetts General Laws, PART I, TITLE XX, CHAPTER 143, Section 22. Imbedded in a page-long legalese jargon it states that "any items kept on a fire escape for more than 20 minutes are considered public nuisance and are subject to fines of $100 or less". The only defense left for me would be to argue that 12 frames of 30 seconds each add up only to 6 minutes. Comfortably on the safe side of the 20 min limit. A definite advantage of near-live observing with Lodestar over full-fledges astrophotography...

Clear Skies!

--Dom

[Dave In Vermont]

It appears your "utility balcony" is located on the top-floor of the building. You could argue that not many people evacuate a building by climbing up it. Perhaps they predict a flood is coming? Demand a jury-trial. Likely the district-attorney would run away.

Clear Skies,

Dave

[DoctorD]

Hi Dom

Welcome to the group - a great set up and yet again demonstrates that we can achieve remote viewing from the most unlikely locations!.

Looking forward to more of your posts.

Clear skies