First Light - Modded EOS 1000d - NGC 7000

[Steve 1962]

Managed to get 5 x 900 sec subs out of my new EOS 1000d (which was modded by Andy at Astronomiser last week) before it got too light through my WO ZS70 RFIII and Astronomik CLS. Acquired and stacked in Nebulosity 2 then stretched in Photoshop.

This was a first play with no time for darks, flats or bias frames and I'm very pleased with the way the camera performed. (a bigger image can be found here: http://c3yzga.bay.livefilestore.com/y1plpqeTtCQO8BLmNtRsF_piMrzQL8jiXr-4qz6kABZPeYNHWXArMJY0CbUKlsVcVTPzalhBHKmVYdJrnQNhvGOSe9zoLhE6hs8/NGC-7000-2010-06-17.jpg?psid=1

(Still a Jpeg though - sorry!)

By the way, this was taken with a 7mm spacer between the T mount of the camera and the RFIII but I'm still getting circular "smearing" (see the top left of this image which I've already cropped to get rid of the worst effects) - does anyone else have similar problems or know of a "fix" please?

Off now to take some darks....

TTFN

Steve

[Coco]

Superb effort, maybe a little pink but it will look great with some bias & darks..

On the whole very detailed and delightful.

Guy..

[ncjunk]

I agree with the pink comment but the image is great, lovely detail.

[Psychobilly]

Very nice data - just want to teak the color a but in the processing....

Star shapes...

Nearly all small fracs will benefit from a field flattener of flattner/reducer...

I'd have a chat with a few of the dealers to see which are best suited to the ZS70...

My FFIII is slightly overcorrecting on my Megrez 72 and sorting out the "optimal" spacing is soemthing that I will do when the nights start to lengthen...so far I have just worked at the two extremes and can go from radial to sagital stretched stars so the sweet spot should be in there somewhere - just got to find it

Peter...

Peter...

[Deneb]

I agree it's a liitle pink, hope you don't mind I done a slight re-edit in your pic.. Just some Curves & Levels.

Nadeem.

[peter shah]

a nice shot....with some good detail, but as mentioned a bit magenta

[Steve 1962]

Thanks for the feedback Guys - really appreciate the comments. Now that the footie's over (what a waste of an evening that was!) Darks, Biases, Curves and Levels are the order of the day...and Nadeem many thanks for taking the time to play with it - I always worry a bit about how it "should" look...and that was a great help.

Peter - my "ideal" spacing between the Flattener and the T mount seems to be between 5 and 7 mm - 5 mm and the stars are radial and 7mm they're sagital.

I've just built a peltier cooler out of 1.2mm aluminium and that fits between the t ring and flattener so we'll see how 6.2 mm looks.

Cheers

Steve

[Psychobilly]

Cheers steve that similar to my findings with the Megrez 72 and the FF III...

I have made a series of T extensions and spacers that let me fine tune it..... the joys of astroboot and a lathe...

It's just i'm waiting for longer dark nights to finalise it...

Peter...

[Steve 1962]

I'll be very interested to hear how you get on Peter -I find it more than a little annoying that a global manufacturer like WO can't get it right or even tell their customers how to sort their products out - we get few enough clear nights without having to faff around with this sort of thing.

That's my rant for this evening - I feel better now!

Steve