Re: [APML] First halfway decent cassigrain image

["Stuart Heggie" <stuart.j.heggie@sympatico.ca>]

Bradley - you are off to a great start! I think for sure you can expose longer than you have on
this item. I see you were guiding manually (John Mirtle will be proud of you!). You should go
longer even if it is really cold out. My first manually guided shot of Orion was 45 min shin deep
in snow at -15C or about 5 F. You can do it! Anyway, super job!

Stuart
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bradley" <bhope@thorngarden.net>
To: "Discussion of Film Astrophotography" <astro-photo@seds.org>
Sent: Thursday, January 06, 2005 10:53 AM
Subject: [APML] First halfway decent cassigrain image


> Morning;
>
> I've been lurking for a long time without contributing anything..my LX90
> died just as I was getting serious about trying to image at cassigrain and
> had purchased an STI Stiletto IV after trying to get a homemade knife edge
> to work with little success. Now I have a 10" LX200 to play with, received
> it 2 and a half weeks ago and I've used it three times..first two times for
> just a couple of hours before clouds rolled in..but got it setup on the
> pier, got the initial alignment and then drift aligned, and collimated..and
> tinkered a lot getting familiar with the new scope.
>
> Nice weather a couple nights ago for several hours so I went for the gold
> ring and tried imaging at .63..not much choice in what to do since I don't
> yet have the piggy back adapter for the new instrument. I'm pretty much a
> rookie at this, trying to figure out processing, but hopefully I won't be
> too embarrassed to post here with all the great images I've seen posted by
> others.
>
> Looks like I can get at least a half stop, if not a full stop, more exposure
> before I start showing sky fog...light pollution here is around 4.5~5 on the
> Bortle scale..so I'm going to try both 18min and 24min the next time I get
> decent sky.
>
> Seeing was only average (which I guess might give me bigger stars) but I
> suspect I'm not 'quite' at the sweet spot for focus, the STI came with the
> 300 line/inch ronchi and has a bit of 'depth of field' so I had to take my
> best guess. I'm planning on getting the 'true knife edge' adapter for the
> STI in the near future which should help.
>
> Anyway..rambled more than enough.... it's the usual target for rookies this
> time of year, I suppose..M42. Details are below the image.
>
> http://astronomy.thorngarden.net/orion-01-05-05.html
>
> Comments and suggestions gratefully accepted.
>
> Clear skies
>
> Bradley
> 48°07'12.72" N 123°27'29.16" W
> http://astronomy.thorngarden.net
>
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