Got bored today

[Kaptain Klevtsov]

I started on the experimental Ha widefield " 'scope" using a lens that I found and a bit of drain pipe that was nearby. The plan is to utilise the uncorrected, well carp really, lens with a narrow band pass filter to see if it will form an image.

The view through it looks like this at the moment:-

Then I got the Ha filter to fit in the 600mm Sigma camera lens and tested it out. The two images below are severe crops, the first is in "normal" mode without the Ha filter, the second with it in. The image quality is similar with just the red channel during daytime testing, but it wouldn't save just the red channel in CS2 (more like I can't work it out) so we'll have to wait and see. Targets include NGC7000 when the clouds go away.

And this is a pigeon, probably the first time one has been photographed in Ha.

Captain Chaos

[Martin 2]

Great stuff CC,

Glad I'm not the only one using bits of plumbing.

M2

[GordonCopestake]

Thats not plumbing thats precision custom engineering!! Tight tolerances on those pipes i can tell you

[Kaptain Klevtsov]

A bit too tight. I had to precision stamp on it at one point.

Captain Chaos

[Astroman]

[Martin 2]

Thats my kind of D I Y

:D

M2

[Naz]

What size stamp Capt, size 10 hobnail?

naz

[Kaptain Klevtsov]

My some people are rough! Size 9 was sufficient.

Trial observations of a wall 6 metres away show that there are serious issues with the optics for visual use. Hope the small chip size and small bandwidth sort this out.

BTW, the lens is plano-convex, is there a best way round for it? Anybody want to guess? Flat side to the chip is how it is now, but that can change easily.

Captain Chaos

[Naz]

That is the conventional way Capt, but you could experiment. As for useing plumbing bits, I did see somewhere on my travels through the web a focuser made out of a sink outlet and plastic pipe!.

naz

[Kaptain Klevtsov]

I ssupect that the focus will be ever so fiddly because of the very short focal length. I haven't found out what it is yet (and couldn't honestly care less) but it's close to 150mm which is about f/1.2. Very fast and therefore very little depth of field. I'm hoping that a one-time focussing within a hair of spot-on plus a helical (pipe thread or similar) fine adjustment will make it work. To infinity from beyond (the moon) to paraphrase.

Big lumps of widefield on a webcam chip in Ha. Could be fun.

Captain Chaos, or as she calls me King Rubbish. (Might have misheard).

[Naz]

With wide field compressed into a small chip, I suspect that too many objects will fall on each pxel, so it could be self defeating :?

naz