The Tarantula Nebula - Officina Stellare RiDk 305 F7.9 at Southern Sky Gems Observatory

[Boren]

Hi guys,

After installing the scope and all additional equipment 200 km into the Kalahari Desert, Namibia, and spending the 2 months since in fine tuning the equipment to best performance, here’s the first full image shot remotely: The Tarantula Nebula.

When planning the Southern Sky Observatory project, Tal and I made a point of replicating, exactly, the feeling of shooting an object out in the field... We sought to give our friends and us the feeling of actually "being there", directly interacting with the familiar interfaces we have grown to love. Sitting in front of the MaximDL familiar screen, and performing all the familiar tasks from many thousands of miles away (while having an online view of the scope's every move), was - for me - the greatest and most satisfying feeling of all.

This image was shot at prime focus, 0.46 arcsec per pixel, and covers 39.95x10.25 arcmin. – a new experience for me altogether.

Here’s the image in full resolulution (twice the version below): http://www.pbase.com...image/158459191 - I hope you like it, and any comments are, as always, very welcome.

A live view of the MaximDL screen: http://tinyurl.com/MaximDLSSG
A live view of the scope (Infra-Red of course :-)): http://tinyurl.com/LiveViewCam 
A live view of the scope sensors: http://tinyurl.com/ScopeSensors

Cheers,
Harel

[perfrej]

I am curious... Even your full resolution image is only a quarter of the sensor area. Did you down-sample the L???

/per

[Boren]

I am curious... Even your full resolution image is only a quarter of the sensor area. Did you down-sample the L???

/per

Thanks Per. Yes, as you can see on my site, the image is downsampled to 0.86 arcsec per pixel, to fit my screen (1570 pixels wide). The original is 0.46 arcsec per pixel. Cheers, Harel

[Boren]

As I got a request on another forum - more on the Southen Sky Observatory can be found here:

http://www.pbase.com/boren/southen_sky_gems_observatory

Cheers,

Harel

[Knight of Clear Skies]

Very good indeed, I look forward to seeing more DSOs from the southern skies.

[toxic]

very nice 

[Newbie karl 1]

Fantastic picture! Just showed my 3 yr old who said it's very big, has it eaten fish and chips! I think he likes it too! Great how the night sky and great pictures can spark the imagination.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Chris]

Very nice indeed!

[Boren]

Guys, thanks for looking!

As soon as weather improves in the Kalahari (due 1-2 months from now) we'll invite the group to some "open-nights".

Looking forward to having fun together!

Cheers,

Harel

[peter shah]

Always a pleasure to see your images Harel...this is no exception....beautiful!

[jeremile]

Hello Harel.

Beautiful picture with lot of colors and details.

Thank you for sharing.

Jeremy