Much better Moon(s)!

Whilst testing out the guiding capabilities of my setup (inconclusive at this time),  I decided to test out both telescopes on our beautiful Moon. Last night (27th January 2013), she was full and really bright, so a filter was used to bring down the brightness. Without it, all the camera was picking up was a big white circle!

Anyway, the first shot:

Moon 27th Jan 2013 with QHY5v and TS Optics 150mm. Mosaic of 5 images of 263 frames each

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 This was taken with the larger of the two scopes. It has actually been built up from 5 images of different regions, which in turn have been taken from an .avi file of 263 frames per image. These 5 .avi files have been aligned, stacked and processed in Registax 6, an excellent piece of free software, and then exported to Photoshop where they are stitched together to make the final image.

And the second image:

Moon 27th Jan 2013 with QHY5v and William Optics 66mm. Mosaic of 2 images of 1863 frames each

This image is taken with the smaller WO66, but is a mosaic of 2 images made from 1863 frames each. The greater number of frames has clearly led to a sharper image, but unfortunately there is a blemish in the Procellarum Oceanus (top left). I have amateurishly tried to remove the blemish in the next image, but a reprocess will be in order to get rid of it more effectively:

Moon 27th Jan 2013 with QHY5v and William Optics 66mm. Mosaic of 2 images of 1863 frames each (Blemish Removed)

All in all I'm pretty pleased with what my kit has produced. It's not a lunar set up by any means but these pics are quite pretty! I just worry now that getting a taste of solar system imaging could lead to another purchase. A nice Catadioptric could be on the cards!

Building a website....

Started putting a website together over the last few days...

www.badgerastro.co.uk

...the idea being that it can be a 'one-stop-shop' for astronomy. So I'm putting up basic articles about telescopes, how to use them and what to / not to look for, introductory astronomy articles and links to good suppliers and further information. It's not completed yet, but if anyone fancies it, I'd appreciate some feedback. If you have a minute, please let me know what you think - all criticism welcome! E-mail for the website is admin@badgerastro.co.uk, or you can leave comments here!

Thanks in advance,

Badgerchap

New pics! One new target and one old....

First useable astropics in some time! I took these last night and then processed them today:

M42 The Great Oriuon Nebula: Back to an old favourite.

 I took this at the end of my session yesterday, with 60 exposures of 30 seconds each on ISO 800. The scope was the TS 6" and the exposure was unguided, which frankly shows. Collimation is clearly still off (grr) as there is flaring on the brighter stars, but things are working, but guiding can't come soon enough! I certainly prefer the Running Man part of this compared to earlier attempts, but the colours in the main gas cloud seem over blue. I think if I can improve the stars with guiding and get a bit better with processing, I might start to get a decent image here.

NGC2024 (The Flame Nebula), IC 434 and Barnard 33 (The Horsehead Nebula)

This is the first time I've had a go at what is one of my favourite deep sky objects. The Flame is the large yellowish flash next to the largest star, Alnitak, which is the leftmost star of Orion's belt. IC434 is the pinkish streak and the Horsehead is, faily obviously, the small horsehead shaped diffuse nebula within IC434. When I was younger, I thought the horsehead was the whole complex, which still looks to me like it might be the head of a dragon.

The Horsehead itself is a vast cloud of dust which obscures the light emmanating from the emission nebula behind.

As for the image, I'm fairly pleased considering the equipment. My DSLR is unmoddified, which means that its built in Infrared filter is obscuring much of the light from IC434, a Hydrodgen Alpha region. Also, as with the image of M42, the collimation is inaccurate, leading to star flaring. Otherwise, it's not to bad. Guiding and better collimation will tidy things up a lot, even without a modification of my DSLR!

Whilst my new kit is outside having a stab at the Horsehead Nebula, I thought it must be a good opportunity to plug a little documentary I made early last year. The sound's not terrific, but considering my microphone was a pair of iPhone headphones, what can I expect?! Comments kindly

requested. Thanks!

 

Incidentally, I do have the video sequence ready for a second episode, with somewhat better graphics, but haven't yet done the voiceover. If I get a positive response here, maybe I'll finally get around to finishing episode 2!

New Scope!

Once again, the clouds have remained resolutely in place, so what to do but mollify my needs by buying a nice new telescope!

 It is a TS Optics 6" (150mm) f/4 Newtonian, nice and fast for imaging. However, it came in the post, which means it's been plenty jossled in its travels!

I originally worried that there was something awry with the focusser, as it was very stiff and made a grinding noise. Turns out I hadn't taken into account that the focusser is presumably designed for imaging, and thusly to hold on to big heavy cameras. This means there are a number of tightening bolts on the mechanism which I'd neglected to loosen! Phew! No Problem.

Next problem isn't going to be so easy, and is going to take a lot of tweaking and, probably, swearing. There is a collimation issue, of course from the postal service! However, I'm less than expert at collimation, having only ever used a big Dobsonian. Whilst these need collimation, it doesn't need to be nearly as precise as with an imaging setup.

So, it's time to show you first light. Might seem to a reader as a step backward, as the focussing is terrible, but the image is only a single 1 minute sub, so there's clearly plenty of light arriving at the sensor.

Well, it's a starting point, another one, but there's still a mountain to climb. Once I have the collimation sorted on this puppy, then it's time to set out on the trying adventure that is autouiding! Wahey!