Leo triplet experiment - Fastar

[Helen]

I haven't had the Fastar out for over a year, so I thought I'd give it a go tonight. Martin said the H9 doesn't really work with it and I can see what he means. But at least I've got something, and I think have convinced myself that a Hyperstar would be useful

So my first triplet. 60subs of 30s at f1.9 using Fastar on a NS8 - SXVFH9 unguided and not brilliantly focussed! Very quick process only - better job tomorrow!

I'm grabbing a few 90s subs just to see what happens

Helen

[GazOC]

Very nice Helen.

[Les Tilly]

Looking good to me Helen

Les

[Psychobilly]

Well if thats not "really working..." it's still very nice...

Peter...

[MikeD]

A nice fit in the FOV too Helen.

Mike.

[CELESCOPE]

Looks fine to me Helen, great FOV ,and for unguided a cracking image.

Rog:)

[jgs001]

looks good to me Helen

[Stephen Green]

Nice image Helen

Stephen

[Helen]

Thanks everyone. The monitor in the house this morning makes this look better than it did last night in the Obs . I quite like it!

I was getting a horrible gradient, what looked like vignetting, and some strange shaped stars around the outside. The image is cropped to remove most of these. I'll need to do some further investigation of the full subs etc later on, and give it some more processing time. I've got a mix of exposure lengths and some with and some without an IR filter. I also need to check the set up, as I think I was getting a bit of fastar lens rotation last night

It was nice to be out

Helen

[Imahumanbeing]

Brilliant picture Helen:headbang:

[Helen]

Thanks!

I've had ago at reprocessing it, but I don't think its any better really!

Helen

[MartinB]

That shows what the Fastar can do Helen! 30mins has given you a load of detail in the galaxies. Nicely focussed as well which is always a challenge at F1.9. The combination of H9 and fastar is almost brilliant especially given the small round footprint of the H9. It does vignette and my easy way of grabbing flats, using a t-shirt as a diffuser, isn't really an option. Some time ago I went over and old M33 image and found that Rus Croman's Gradient Exterminator did a pretty useful job.

The stars tended to be a let down especially out towards the edges and, of course, using filters is a tedious task. Your stars don't look bad at all on this image.

It can be a frustrating set up there's no doubt you can pull out some spectacular detail in a short time. I still have a Pelican neb and an M31 on my wall at work taken with this set up..

[Helen]

Thanks Martin! On looking at the subs I used again I've realised that it is actually only 9 mins worth of data . The earlier run of 60x30s subs wasn't very well focused . So this is an 80% stack of 20x30s subs.

With more time, these could be good enough to print.

I'd forgotten how much quicker the Fastar is. It makes imaging on nights when many hours aren't available possible. So I see a Hyperstar and a colour camera in my future (Well, Mike is still looking for me to get a PoW )

Helen

[philj]

Cripes, that detail in 30 minutes. Supe image there Helen