First Light Images with FSQ and Pentax 67 on a not so perfect night

All,

Finally made a visit to my dark sky location and the weather guessers
(weathermen) missed the arrival of the cold front by a good 8 hours.
Wind was expected to be out of the west at 5-10mph with reasonable
transparency and no cloud cover.

Set up in 60 degree ambient temperature as darkness fell and while drift
aligning the mount broke out the long sleeve shirt and jacket as the
mercury started to fall. By the time I opened the shutter for the first
image the wind had backed around to the North and the temp had fallen
into the low forties and promised to go much, much lower. Oh yes .. the
wind. Promised to be 5-10 mph ??? nope .... 35mph gusts. This was going
to be a horrible night for a first light test.

New setup was an AP900 Mount with a Tak FSQ106N mounted on top guided by
an STV with Efinder which was mounted to a dovetail afixed to the
focuser of the Takahashi. Photon collector was the venerable Pentax 67
with a Hutech vacuum back, loaded with E200 film. The paper backing had
to be cut off prior to loading into the camera because of the vacuum
back. That was an interesting experience in and of itself.

To top it all off there was a subtle microcode bug in the mount wherein
the last button slew if greater than 64x would become the guiding rate.
And yep ... you guessed it, the last button slew was 64x. The guiding
was interesting to say the least .... only one correction in 20 were
actually made and the STV reported better than 3 arc-seconds guiding.
Probably because the 900 mount is more than capable with a piddling 30
pounds on it.

90 minutes .... essentially almost unguided laughs

http://www.celestial-images.com/Images/M31-FSQ.html

Sorted out the guiding problem and while still being horribly abused by
the wind caught this one. Again 90 minutes. This time guiding was +- 1.5
arc-seconds as reported by the STV

http://www.celestial-images.com/Images/M45-FSQ.html

Swung the OTA towards an old favorite. Again 90 minutes.

http://www.celestial-images.com/Imag...n_Complex.html

After the meridian flip I decided to really test the ability of E200 on
a reflection Nebula and got 90 minutes on this one.

http://www.celestial-images.com/Images/Witch-FSQ.html


Overall I think things turned out well. Probably I can improve the polar
alignment a bit and the Witch needs more data still. Probably 3 hours.

Hiding in the lee of the car and having the wind literally howling loud
enough to make conversation with an imaging friend difficult and waiting
out the interminable 90 minute exposures made for an interesting night.


Happy New Year.

Bill

--

William R. Mattil : http://www.celestial-images.com

http://www.celestial-images.com/Images/Witch-FSQ.html

I think the wide field shots like yours are great. I'm new to imaging,
so I'm wondering about some of the artifacts...

What's causing the dark wedges on the bright stars? Also...the blue
vertical line at the top of the image?

--
Clear Skies,
Paul Murphy

(remove gemini to email me)

Paul Murphy wrote:
http://www.celestial-images.com/Images/Witch-FSQ.html


I think the wide field shots like yours are great. I'm new to imaging,
so I'm wondering about some of the artifacts...

What's causing the dark wedges on the bright stars? Also...the blue
vertical line at the top of the image?

Paul,

These artifacts are, I believe, caused by the extra glass of the Petzval
design. I've seen them before on a Televue as well. My personal decision
was to leave them as is and post the essentially raw images. They could
be fixed in PS and even some of the inevitable star bloat could be
reduced as well. The vertical line on the Witch image is apparently a
scanning artifact or possibly a scratch in the emulsion itself.

Being more of a Newtonian kind of guy I am new to imaging with
refractors so I am at the begining of a learning curve.


My personal opinion is that I would rather see raw images when
evaulating an imaging setup. They tell a more complete story of what the
system can produce rather than how much digital manipulation I can do.


Regards

Bill

--

William R. Mattil : http://www.celestial-images.com

"William R. Mattil" wrote in message
. com...
Paul Murphy wrote:
http://www.celestial-images.com/Images/Witch-FSQ.html


I think the wide field shots like yours are great. I'm new to imaging,
so I'm wondering about some of the artifacts...

What's causing the dark wedges on the bright stars? Also...the blue
vertical line at the top of the image?

Paul,

These artifacts are, I believe, caused by the extra glass of the Petzval
design. I've seen them before on a Televue as well. My personal decision
was to leave them as is and post the essentially raw images. They could
be fixed in PS and even some of the inevitable star bloat could be
reduced as well. The vertical line on the Witch image is apparently a
scanning artifact or possibly a scratch in the emulsion itself.

Being more of a Newtonian kind of guy I am new to imaging with
refractors so I am at the begining of a learning curve.


My personal opinion is that I would rather see raw images when
evaulating an imaging setup. They tell a more complete story of what the
system can produce rather than how much digital manipulation I can do.


Regards

Bill

--

William R. Mattil : http://www.celestial-images.com


I think your images are -absolutely -stunning!!!
Thanks for sharing them.
Randy