Couple from Last Night

[CELESCOPE]

a nice clear evening yesterday, so out i go to grab some more nebs , wanted to get the veil again as the last one was ok but suffered curvature with my old set up , this time much better , also tried the very faint nebula NGC 7380 in Cepheus, this is a faint devil, but pleased once again , and not to overprocess it ,as it does stand faint against the backdrop.

Taken with the Atik 16hr using the HEQ6 PRO, ED 80 ,HA filter,exposures around an hour each , overall, binned 2x2 ,have to try 1x1 sometime lol, and processed manually in Maxim.

Rog

[MartinB]

That veil is stunning Rog. When you say exposures of an hour each do you mean total exposure time. Great work getting such good detail using Ha with an 80mm scope. Looks like you've got the set up sorted now Rog. Is it worth the hassle of going for longer exposures of individual subs when you can get quality like this? BTW is it just an extender you have got for the ED80 or is it a focal reducer?

[CELESCOPE]

Hi Martin its the Rini focal reducer mate ,also have a blank as well for prime at f 7,5, will give that ago soon as well ,ah yes subs ranging from 50 to 70 secs to make about about an hour . 2x2 binning seems to work well for me at the moment , as Noels actions, can be done to really smooth out the image to give it that higher quality finish, i have still a long way to go i know ,before i am happy with my imaging , but looking back yesterday at my old stuff , i can see the progress is amazing, i will have to put an old image up to campare sometime ,

Rog

[gaelicstorm7]

Wow Rog, that veil is stunning !, such fine detail, sorry for the dumb question but what does 2x2 binning mean ?

Thanks

Alan

[OXO]

Makes me think sell all my gear and get your setup Rog hehe wonderful images

[FLO]

Wonderful images Rog, both of them 8)

[CELESCOPE]

Hi Alan ,

yes with the ccd imaging you have the facility of what they call binning, what this does is to put more pixels into an image ,downside is of course the quality is lower 1x1 is the best quality , 2x2 will give you more sensitivity and slightly less quality, but this can be smoothed out in the process,3x3 and so on ,downloads on a usb 1 is ok about 6 to 9 secs, at 2x2 , i find this at the moment works nicely for me , normally start off at 3 sec downloads 2x2 binning , thats just enough to focus the stars to pinpoint , and see the image faintly, then can centre it and do a dummy run at about 30 secs . once i,m happy with the position and focus ,set the exposure time, and hit the button and get as many subs that i think is needed.hope that helps, anything i missed ,i,m sure Arthur will correct me .

Rog

[geppetto]

I see your keeping up your usual high standards Rog 8)

Lovely images, a treat for the eyes

[Ambermile]

... anything i missed ,i,m sure Arthur will correct me .

Rog

As if

Actually though, a more in depth explanation of binning... A ccd surface has a matrix of pixels, let's for the sake of arguement call it 640 columns by 480 rows. That's 307200 pixels that can each collect a set amount of light. At 1 x 1 each pixel works on it's own. Now, if you bin 2 x 2 your effective ccd area is reduced to 320 lines by 240 lines because you are using each 2 x 2 section of pixels as just one pixel. So, only 76800 pixels but each pixel is in reality four pixels. Plainly then, your sensitivity per pixel binned 2 x 2 is four times greater than when you are using a 1 x 1 bin. Downside is your resolution suffers because (in this case) your image size is 25% of a 1 x 1 image.

Arthur

PS - love the lion

[Saso]

What can I say - excellent images.

Saso

[Kaptain Klevtsov]

Great images again Rog., this binning thing then, is that just with proper CCD cameras, or can I just reduce the resolution of the webcam in K3CCD and that ups the sensitivity and downs the pixel count for finding stuff?

Captain Chaos

[Ambermile]

Great images again Rog., this binning thing then, is that just with proper CCD cameras, or can I just reduce the resolution of the webcam in K3CCD and that ups the sensitivity and downs the pixel count for finding stuff?

Captain Chaos

Well, it's for proper ccd's CC, but then that's what you have. Go to Steve Chambers' site (pmdo.com) and look for Desire. That will bin for you - changing resolution makes no difference...

Arthur

[Kaptain Klevtsov]

Cheers Arthur, will do just that.

Captain Chaos