Fireworks Galaxy in TEC140

[ollypenrice]

Part of my 'refractor galaxies' collection. The TEC has done this before but only at half the resolution because of pixel size. This used the Atik460.

Lum 10x15mins, RGB 5x15mins per channel, Ha 9x20mins.

All aboard the infallible Mesu 200. (Yet another one arrives on Monday for a new robotic shed. It isn't mine, alas.)

This is a crop but, even so, it's best to take a closer look by clicking on the image. Taken with guests from Serbia. They brought outstanding skies with them.

Olly

 

[swag72]

Very nice Olly - I love the core detail and colours......... This does look superb ??

[Mr Spock]

Lovely detail

[Chris]

Remarkable when you zoom in! I see plenty of brown dust in kind of a honeycomb pattern. Really interesting and thought provoking image, Olly.  

[Barry-Wilson]

Really spectacular Olly . . . the image scale suits the TEC and its resolution . . . just marvel at the detail in the core!

[tomato]

Another great capture with a large aperture refractor, I marvel at the clean detail when compared to my ‘smash and grab’ version, Esprit 150 and G2-8300.  I suppose I can console myself with the knowledge that it has a fraction of Olly’s total integration time and was taken under a moderate UK suburban sky.

Olly, with the news that you have another Mesu arriving, have you found room for another robotic shed? Have you thought about building them on a vertical carousel??

[ollypenrice]

8 hours ago, tomato said:

Another great capture with a large aperture refractor, I marvel at the clean detail when compared to my ‘smash and grab’ version, Esprit 150 and G2-8300.  I suppose I can console myself with the knowledge that it has a fraction of Olly’s total integration time and was taken under a moderate UK suburban sky.

Olly, with the news that you have another Mesu arriving, have you found room for another robotic shed? Have you thought about building them on a vertical carousel??

That's a decent result. What camera are you using? With the 460 I'm working at about 0.9"PP which is probably about what the seeing will allow - and even then not on every clear night. When the FWHM is poor I shoot colour rather than lum.

The new shed involved selling off the big Dob, though I'll give due consideration to your suggestion of vertically stacked observatories!!

?lly

[wimvb]

2 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

The new shed involved selling off the big Dob, though I'll give due consideration to your suggestion of vertically stacked observatories!!

?lly

"All together now"

?

Great galaxy image. It must be galaxy season all year in France. Up here it's still too bright, so nothing better to do (obviously).

[Stub Mandrel]

You've tempted me to try this target again tonight.

A good test of how well I now have my kit dialled and @tomato and @ollypenrice provide me with benchmarks of what to hope for and what to dream of...

[tomato]

6 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

That's a decent result. What camera are you using? With the 460 I'm working at about 0.9"PP which is probably about what the seeing will allow - and even then not on every clear night. When the FWHM is poor I shoot colour rather than lum.

Thanks for the comments. The camera is a Moravian G2-8300, 1.06”PP with the Esprit.  I could try putting Tomatobro’s  Atik 314 OSC on this scope, at 1.27”PP it would lose some resolution but at least galaxy targets like this would fill the FOV. Worth a try?

[ollypenrice]

1 hour ago, tomato said:

Thanks for the comments. The camera is a Moravian G2-8300, 1.06”PP with the Esprit.  I could try putting Tomatobro’s  Atik 314 OSC on this scope, at 1.27”PP it would lose some resolution but at least galaxy targets like this would fill the FOV. Worth a try?

No. The idea of filling the field of view is neither here nor there. You can always crop a widefield image, after all. A smaller sensor does not 'get you closer' to the target. What matters is how many pixels you put under the object's projected image and your 8300 will put more pixels under it than a 314, so you'll gt a larger image of the galaxy out of it. Besides, I always found OSC slow going on galaxies and this one, in particular, thrives on an input of Ha. Stick with your Moravian. That's a good setup.

Olly

[Rodd]

Well...it looks like the weather has broken for Olly, another magnificent image.  I pray (in curses) that the clear skies move--don't particularly care whether its east or west, as long as its FAR.

Rodd

[tomato]

On 14/07/2018 at 19:07, ollypenrice said:

No. The idea of filling the field of view is neither here nor there. You can always crop a widefield image, after all. A smaller sensor does not 'get you closer' to the target. What matters is how many pixels you put under the object's projected image and your 8300 will put more pixels under it than a 314, so you'll gt a larger image of the galaxy out of it. Besides, I always found OSC slow going on galaxies and this one, in particular, thrives on an input of Ha. Stick with your Moravian. That's a good setup.

Olly

I take your point, my ‘reasoning’ was based on perception rather than a technical assessment. Having said that, I would be slightly better off going after small galaxy targets with the 150 using an Atik 460 rather than the KAF 8300 chip, simply because I have a slightly better per pixel resolution? 

[Stub Mandrel]

Well my attempt was a flop. Something odd with guiding straight up meant that DEC and RA were suddenly wandering together and overshooting together when corrected,leading to poor stars. Also poor colour and little faint detail due to relatively bright sky ?

[steppenwolf]

Lovely galaxy image, Olly - some marvellous detail in the core.

[tomato]

55 minutes ago, Stub Mandrel said:

Well my attempt was a flop. Something odd with guiding straight up meant that DEC and RA were suddenly wandering together and overshooting together when corrected,leading to poor stars. Also poor colour and little faint detail due to relatively bright sky ?

I hasten to add my effort was captured when there was still some proper Astro darkness at my location, I'd struggle to get any decent colour at the moment, but the nights are drawing in!

[Stub Mandrel]

Made worse by my brother (non-astronomer) ringing up to say how brilliant the skys were in the Alps and that he's spent a while talking astrophotography with the chap who takes the mountain bikes of the chair lift at ?9,000 feet.

[ollypenrice]

1 hour ago, tomato said:

I take your point, my ‘reasoning’ was based on perception rather than a technical assessment. Having said that, I would be slightly better off going after small galaxy targets with the 150 using an Atik 460 rather than the KAF 8300 chip, simply because I have a slightly better per pixel resolution? 

I think it's very 'seeing dependent' but, in the end, my answer is always the same: try it. Theory says that the Sony chips have far higher QE and so are faster and more sensitive. However, my buzz in this game is processing and a nice deep dataset from a Kodak chip is my idea of heaven. My processing relationship with my Sony data is always a fight. With my Kodak data all is sweetness and light. (Apart from column defects on one very old camera). I don't know why this is but it may be to do with well depth. Whatever, a nice deep set of subs from an Atik 11000 is processing heaven.

Olly