[APML] OT: Zero light of TROBAR Telescope

[Vicent Peris <vicentperis@ya.com>]

Hi,

last friday we took the first images with our new 24" f/8 RC telescope.
These are "zero" light because the telescope has some software problems
that affect tracking and pointing (telescope's hardware is nearly **perfect**),
but this will bet corrected soon; and because we took the image
with a small CCD, a StarLight Xpress MX516. The FOV with this CCD
is really small, only 157" x 211"! And the CCD has an old chip with
a QE of only 30% at 500 nm. We are waiting to receive a new CCD
from FLI with a 1K x 1K chip; with this camera we will go deeper and
deeper. And at the ending of this year we will receive another camera
with a 2K x 2K Marconi chip (we will go wider and wider...).

Because of the bad tracking we only took exposures of 5 to 10 seconds.
But the 24" is really a photon sucker! We made three photos: M13, M57
and NGC6543. With an exposure of only 2 seconds, NGC6543 did show
it's structure clearly. On the ohter hand, the seeing is not bad on the
observatory; we had a seeing of around 1,3"-1,6" approx. The pic of
Cat's Eye, after deconvolution, shows many subarsecond structures.

You can view the images at this link:
http://www.cepheusastrophoto.com/TROBAR/index.htm

And we took a short video of the telescope moving at 6 degrees
per second. The file is 4,8 MB:
http://www.cepheusastrophoto.com/TROBAR/TROBAR.AVI

I know these are not beautiful pictures, but they show the
potential of telescope / observing site...

Sorry, but there are some halos around many stars in M13,
I will correct it with some maskings, but now is time to go
to bed!

Well, comments wellcome,
Vicent.



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