Crescent Moon – 12/07/2010

I looked up while walking the dog this evening and noticed an extremely thin crescent moon.  One of the Cloudy Nights imaging contests for this month includes a ‘Thinnest Crescent’ challenge so I grabbed my camera/tripod and aimed a Sigma 70-300mm f/5.6 APO DG at Luna.

Jupiter – 11/22/2010

First imaging attempt with my 12.5 f/6 truss-dob.  I had to cut the truss-poles down by 0.75″ for the webcam to reach focus.  This has been on my to-do list ever since first-light last November when I realized none of my UO orthos shorter than 9mm would reach focus either.  Now they all do and my 31mm Hyperion still focuses without needing an extension tube.  At this point I consider the telescope itself finished.

I had to nudge the scope until Jupiter was just off the chip and hit record as it moved into the field.  In this fashion I only got about 400-500 frames per video.  This image is 457 frames at 10fps using a Philips SPC900NC webcam at prime focus.

180 frames with 2x barlow:

My Royce 12.5″ conical continues to blow me away.  The increase in resolving power over the 5″ SCT is obvious and I was happy to see more detail at prime focus than I got using a 2x barlow with the smaller scope.  Planetary imaging with this setup is a trying process though.  Adding a 2x barlow made it very difficult to get Jupiter in the field.  Going up to a 3x was flat out impossible.  I’m hoping it will be possible after I finish building an equatorial platform for the truss-dob.  With tracking in RA I think imaging with a 4x Powermate would be worth attempting.

Jupiter

This is my first planetary image in a very long time.  Shot with a Celestron NexStar 5SE, Philips SPC900NC, and Celestron 2x barlow.  Captured using Philips Vlounge at 10fps for 45 seconds and 50% gain.  Stacked in Registax 5 and post-processed with Photoshop CS4.

RCA Splitter Box

This is a low-tech, inexpensive way to split power amongst several dew-heater strips.  I got the idea from my friend Kevin who had rigged up a similar widget for his imaging equipment a few years back.  Simply put, the RCA splitter box is a set of 8 jacks all wired in parallel.  Power can be connected to any of the jacks and all other connected devices receive 12V (or 6, 9, 13.8, whatever is being supplied).

So far I have made two, one for my truss-dob and the other for my imaging setup.  At Fall Star Party I powered them both from the same Pyramid supply which claims 10A constant at 13.8V (but I have yet to see it last longer than about 45 minutes with 8A constant).  I have something like 3.5A total for all my dew-heaters and it handled that all night long.

All materials for this project were purchased at Radio Shack for about $10 total.  The list includes:

• small plastic project box
• RCA jack panel (I went with 8 jacks but they also have a 4-jack panel)
• copper wire
• solder

Tools used:

• screwdriver
• soldering iron
• wire cutters/strippers
• helping hands (stand with aligator clips)

Reprocess – IC5070 – The California Nebula

After taking a fresh look at this image I decided to redo the post-processing in Photoshop.  The reds seemed too saturated and I wanted to try bringing out the fainter nebulosity beyond the brightest regions.

I am still very much a beginner when it comes to post-processing.  It’s difficult to articulate what I’m going for or why I prefer one process attempt over another.  Here is the before and after for this particular image:

Original process:

…. and the redo:

Fall Star Party – 2010

FSP 2010 was once again a memorable experience.   I had the opportunity to spend four days and three nights among the best company anyone could ask for, imaging and observing until the wee hours under the dark skies of CAV.

From left - Kwang Lee, Carlos Solis, Kevin Reese, Curt Walker, Mel Dawson

This year a more appropriate name might have been ‘FROZEN Star Party’.  Temperatures dipped into the mid-30′s each night and made for excellent conditions.  We all took full advantage and survived by the grace of our portable propane heaters.  Sometimes I can’t help but see the humor in certain aspects of amatuer astronomy.  What other hobby requires that you get up in the middle of the night, stumble out of your tent into freezing weather and operate a pile of highly specialized equipment while half-asleep and shivering in the cold?

Meanwhile Carlos and Kevin never had to leave their Kendrick tents for routine maintenance during imaging sessions.  For them it involved rolling over, sticking one arm out the sleeping bag and tapping a few keystrokes on their laptops.  I’m giving serious thought to cutting a zip-open panel in the ceiling of my 8-man tent so I can house my imaging rig next year and avoid hypothermia.

Some personal highlights of this year’s FSP included setting up tents in 20mph winds, imaging four different targets under good/great conditions, putting a small dent in the H400 list with my 12.5″ f/6 truss-dob, observing the Helix Nebula through Kwang’s 18″ Obsession, seeing an Astro-Telescopes 150mm refractor in person (I have a strange affinity for this telescope), and seeing Mel’s reactions to his first stay at CAV.  My favorite time might have been gathering in the clubhouse for football, pizza and image processing.

M31 – The Andromeda Galaxy

IC5070 – The Pelican Nebula

Another first attempt here.  Cygnus is my favorite part of the sky and I’ve been wanting to try this target every since shooting its neighbor back in March (NGC7000 – North American Nebula).  Exposing 15-minute subs is asking a lot of my setup because my flexure threshold is somewhere between 12-13 minutes.  I decided to go for it though.  Half of my subs were garbage due to tracking/guiding error, which suspiciously coincide with crossing the meridian.

It needs A LOT more integration time….like 10 times more, but I broke the rules and stopped the series so I could hit another target on my last night at FSP.  This target is now at the top of my ‘revisit’ list for whenever I’m able to ugrade to serious camera.  Based on the results my two imaging buddies were getting with their cooled CCD cameras I wish I could see a mere 4 subs on this target taken by either of them.

IC434 – The Horsehead Nebula

My first attempt on this object was over two years ago with the same modded 350D and a Meade SN8 mounted to a stock Celestron CG-5.  This time I was able to go deeper with longer exposures.  My goal was 5 hours of integration time but unfortunately I had to toss out roughly half of my subs.  The same problem occurred as during my series on IC5070 earlier the same evening.  After crossing the meridian my tracking/guiding went to pot.  Regardless I’m happy to have improved upon a previous attempt on the same target.

NGC1499 – The California Nebula

My first target during the tail-end of FSP 2010.  The goal was to use my new field-flattener/corrector made by Orion specifically for this scope.  I had to custom order a nosepiece from Precise Parts and sadly forgot to ask that the nosepiece have 2″ internal filter threads.  So I was not able to attach my light-pollution filter to the new nosepiece and my first series on this target was a pain to process without the benefit of my IDAS LPS filter during capture.  I therefore decided to wait until threads are cut into the new nosepiece before using the field-flattener.  The following night I reshot the target with the IDAS LPS filter and my standard nosepiece.  The final image shows field-curvature but overall it is much preferred to the unfiltered but flat image from the previous night.  Pick your demon I suppose.