Ngc281 from Andulacia spain

[icpass]

Just got back from the new Griffin educational observatory in Andulacia spain.

Me and Nick Howes had been invited down to test the equipment and to get a feel for the dark skies.

I imaged Ngc 281 The Pacman nebula

the imaging setup consisted of a televue 102 with a meade 80mm short tube refractor for guiding,mounted on a Eq6.The main imager was the Atik 4000 mono and guided with a Meade dsi 2

The image consists of 10x10 min exp in Ha,4x 15 min in O3 and 4x15 min in S2.

We also took darks,flats and bias frames and these were subtracted in maxim dl 5.

The image was then processed by Nick Howes.

We have 2 images the ist is the narrow band image and the second is the Hubble pallette.

I hope you enjoy,

This was an amazing exsperiance for us and we look forward to returning.

Ian

[MartinB]

So what do I have to do to get these sorts of invites. I can test kit! Gis a job!

Great pac men the top one especially

[NickH]

I preferred the top one too. I got about 3 hours sleep in 3 days, imaging till 6am under some of the best skies I have ever seen, with some first class kit.

Ian and I were side by side imaging at the obs, swapping between using a Borg and Televue 102 scope for the main imaging rig.

We tested out the Atik 4021 down to the Atik 16IC for imaging through the days we were there. We imaged on Samsun NC10 netbooks. and I processed the final images on a large desktop and netbook combo using CS4 and Maxim DL5, using Noels actions, Focus Magic, and Fat Tail deconvolution processing. Ian was an absolute star at the obsy (which we have free access to for two weeks a year now...), and we worked ourselves silly during the day, setting up all sorts, testing the equipment, making up cables, securing the site, using the Solarscope SV50 on site, testing the DMK cameras, and taking in quite literally some of the most amazing views of deep sky objects I have ever seen (colour in M42 anyone!!....with the Intes 14" Maksutov and a 40mm Pentax EP....quite amazing)

All in all, courtesy of our chairman Andy Burns, along with John and Kath Griffiths, who have set up this facility, we had a truly amazing time, only stopping imaging at 6am to try and get a few hours sleep before starting work again.

The images Ian has acquired on NGC281 in narrowband were his FIRST go with that setup, and the previous night we had spent hours trying to sort out issues on the Borg rig, again, Ian being an absolute hero, when we worked out that one of the cameras was just not delivering the results we hoped for (we were tesing a one shot colour cam as well!)

Amazing few days, amazing site, fantastic company (thank you John and Kath so much for this!)...and we're going back to do even more soon!

I will be posting up my images in another thread...