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Old March 15th 10, 07:03 PM posted to alt.binaries.pictures.astro
Rick Johnson[_2_]
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Posts: 3,085
Default ASTRO: Returning from the crypt and three first lights

22%! I thought my 11K was inefficient. No wonder the filtered color
camera needed so much time. Tiny pixels don't have a big capture area
then with a low efficiency things are slow. Sounds like there's a lot
blocking each pixel. Still it takes a nice image given enough time.

I figured the newborn was 4 legged. Wild turkeys can be a major pain
here. I've wiped out several windshilds thanks to those guys. They
flush from the roadside ditch and fly right into you. Lost to
windshilds, a headlight and suffered several nasty dents. They seem to
die like crazy yet we still have a zillion of them. They roost on my
deck railing with their butts facing in so they cam make a hasty
retreat. I guess I should just paint the deck white and be done with it.
Of course the instant the season opens not one is seen. We used to
have a zillion ruffed grouse and bobcat that fed on them. Then some DNR
idiot decided to introduce turkeys in the prairie regions. They took
well and then moved to the woods. They took over ruffed grouse
territory so they are rare now. Bobcat can't seem to do well on turkey
and their population has crashed along with the grouse. Grouse were
never a people problem. Dumb as a post they will just sit in the road
until squished but that doesn't create nasty repair bills and they don't
turn decks and yards white. DNR sees it as a success story making all
sorts of false excuses for the lack of grouse and bobcat while the
public is screaming about the property damage the turkeys do.

Sorry about all the storm damage. The thought of my stuff just under a
cover wouldn't let me sleep at nights. Observatory was built to survive
120 mph winds (highest recorded that weren't in a tornado was 105 about
15 years ago. I'm still cleaning up downed trees from those storms, two
a week apart. 105 and 101 mph at a neighbors official weather station.
Time to get out the carpentry tools when time permits.

I've only had less than a dozen imaging nights since September. But I
still have a huge backlog to process. I'm still processing stuff taken
back in July and August.

Rick


Richard Crisp wrote:
This has been a long spell of no imaging for me. I last was able to image on
the evening of Jan 1

Since then I have been inundated with either bad weather, too many chores or
international travel.

Saturday things changed.

I got to test the AP155EDF with the Proline 39000Mono finally under some
decent skies. Seeing wasn't great but it was clear and dark.

I used an Halpha filter and got this shot of the Rosette, a bit late in the
season. I managed to get 14 x 15 minutes.

It was first light for my new AP guidescope. I had a bad storm in January
that blew over my system in its cover. The only things damaged when it hit
the rain-soaked ground were the drawtube for the guidescope (since
straightened and a replacement procured from AP) and the scope cover, that I
had to cut in order to disassemble the system. The wind had no problem
blowing over the system but I could not lift it as a single piece so I had
to cut the cover in order to disassemble it.

In the meantime a friend sold me his AP guidescope so now I have two of
them.

We had a newborn on Saturday morning. So this little fellow also had "first
light" on Saturday. It was about 4-6 hours old when the photo was taken.

The 39MP is a bit low on the QE side at 22% so at 3.5 hours the data is a
bit thin. Still it is fantastic to have such nice resolution over a largish
FOV. I get the same FOV with this AP155EDF/PL39KM as I do with the KAF8300
at 400mm or the KAF3200 at 300mm, but at much higher resolution.


http://www.narrowbandimaging.com/ngc...LI_ha_page.htm






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