Galaxies and Hockey Pucks

Thanks to automation I am now able to perform two hobbies at
once. Last Tuesday I set up a sequence in MaxIm CCD, grabbed
my gear and headed to the rink for a friendly ;-) game of ice
hockey (we lost, but I digress). When I returned I had 3.5 hours
of data captured on NGC 891.

Here is the result from Dallas....

Galaxy NGC 891

Instrument(s): Meade 12" RCX 400 Telescope
CCD Camera: Yankee Robotics Trifid-2, 6303E
Exposu Optec LRBG filters, 100:30:30:30 minutes
Guiding: Meade DSI controled by MaxIm DL
Location: Plano (Dallas), TX
Image Processing: MaxIm DL, Aip4Win V2.0, Photoshop, RC-Astro Gradient

http://galaxyphoto.com/NGC891_RCX_Yankee.htm

--
-Jason Ware

---------------------------------------------------------
VISIT MY ASTROPHOTOGRAPHY HOMEPAGE!!
ASTRO IMAGES FOR DOWN-LOAD, TIPS, REPRINTS
URL: http://www.galaxyphoto.com
---------------------------------------------------------
My Other Hobby....High Power Rocketry
URL: http://www.galaxyphoto.com/rockets

--
--
-Jason Ware

---------------------------------------------------------
VISIT MY ASTROPHOTOGRAPHY HOMEPAGE!!
ASTRO IMAGES FOR DOWN-LOAD, TIPS, REPRINTS
URL: http://www.galaxyphoto.com
---------------------------------------------------------
My Other Hobby....High Power Rocketry
URL: http://www.galaxyphoto.com/rockets

Jason Ware wrote:
Thanks to automation I am now able to perform two hobbies at
once. Last Tuesday I set up a sequence in MaxIm CCD, grabbed
my gear and headed to the rink for a friendly ;-) game of ice
hockey (we lost, but I digress). When I returned I had 3.5 hours
of data captured on NGC 891.

Here is the result from Dallas....

Galaxy NGC 891

Instrument(s): Meade 12" RCX 400 Telescope
CCD Camera: Yankee Robotics Trifid-2, 6303E
Exposu Optec LRBG filters, 100:30:30:30 minutes
Guiding: Meade DSI controled by MaxIm DL
Location: Plano (Dallas), TX
Image Processing: MaxIm DL, Aip4Win V2.0, Photoshop, RC-Astro Gradient


How come that 190 minutes are now 3.5 hours (210min)? The galaxy show a
strong pink tone which seem quite a bit unnatural and (almost) all the
stars are saturated white. Detail within the galaxy dust lanes is
pretty poor for being taken with a 12". I'll venture to suggest that a
revision with PS could better show what's there to be shown.

Andrea T.

wrote:
How come that 190 minutes are now 3.5 hours (210min)? The galaxy show a
strong pink tone which seem quite a bit unnatural and (almost) all the
stars are saturated white. Detail within the galaxy dust lanes is
pretty poor for being taken with a 12". I'll venture to suggest that a
revision with PS could better show what's there to be shown.


Yeah, Jason. And let me say that your hockey game is pretty poor as
well. It show a serious lack of stickhandling skills. How come that
your 80 second shifts are now 1.5 minutes (90 sec)? Your passes are
missing the tape every time. Work on your forechecking, and then come
back and tell us about your hockey game.

Thanks for your "constructive" critisism. You are correct about the stars, I
am going
to work on those but there is only so much I can do. Note the location! You
can't see any trace of the milky way from my location and the Pleiades are
barely visible. In order to over come this you have to stretch very hard
which
makes it tough to avoid clipping the stars. As for the color, it may indeed
be
a bit pink, however, do a google image search on this object and tell me
which one is correct!!!! The green light pollution tends to shift everything
magenta when you correct for it. As for the time, I misspoke slightly, the
total time was around 3.5 hours which included download time, guider
settling, filter wheel, etc.

How come that 190 minutes are now 3.5 hours (210min)? The galaxy show a
strong pink tone which seem quite a bit unnatural and (almost) all the
stars are saturated white. Detail within the galaxy dust lanes is
pretty poor for being taken with a 12". I'll venture to suggest that a
revision with PS could better show what's there to be shown.

Andrea T.

Yeah, Jason. And let me say that your hockey game is pretty poor as
well. It show a serious lack of stickhandling skills. How come that
your 80 second shifts are now 1.5 minutes (90 sec)? Your passes are
missing the tape every time. Work on your forechecking, and then come
back and tell us about your hockey game.


All pretty much true Tom, I am 44 after all ;-)

Jason Ware wrote:
Thanks to automation I am now able to perform two hobbies at
once. Last Tuesday I set up a sequence in MaxIm CCD, grabbed
my gear and headed to the rink for a friendly ;-) game of ice
hockey (we lost, but I digress). When I returned I had 3.5 hours
of data captured on NGC 891.

Here is the result from Dallas....

Galaxy NGC 891

Instrument(s): Meade 12" RCX 400 Telescope
CCD Camera: Yankee Robotics Trifid-2, 6303E
Exposu Optec LRBG filters, 100:30:30:30 minutes
Guiding: Meade DSI controled by MaxIm DL
Location: Plano (Dallas), TX
Image Processing: MaxIm DL, Aip4Win V2.0, Photoshop, RC-Astro Gradient

http://galaxyphoto.com/NGC891_RCX_Yankee.htm

Ice hockey (or "ass hockey" as the NJ transplant with the fake accent I
used to work for in Dallas would call it) in Texas? What's the world
coming to? Is a ski area in Denton next?
;-)

Nice pic BTW. Remarkable considering the conditions.

Shawn

Ice hockey in Texas? What's the world
coming to? Is a ski area in Denton next?

Very much so. The Stars organization alone has 13 sheets of ice with
around 5000 kids. There are about a dozen sheets of ice within 20 minutes
of my house and over 400 men's league teams in Dallas.

But its expensive. Keeping a huge building at 50 degrees when its 104
outside
probably burns a tanker or two a day.

Jason Ware wrote:
Ice hockey in Texas? What's the world
coming to? Is a ski area in Denton next?


Very much so. The Stars organization alone has 13 sheets of ice with
around 5000 kids. There are about a dozen sheets of ice within 20 minutes
of my house and over 400 men's league teams in Dallas.

But its expensive. Keeping a huge building at 50 degrees when its 104
outside
probably burns a tanker or two a day.

Your league is bigger than my town!

Shawn

"Jason Ware" wrote in message
. ..
Thanks to automation I am now able to perform two hobbies at
once. Last Tuesday I set up a sequence in MaxIm CCD, grabbed
my gear and headed to the rink for a friendly ;-) game of ice
hockey (we lost, but I digress). When I returned I had 3.5 hours
of data captured on NGC 891.

Here is the result from Dallas....

Galaxy NGC 891

Superb Jason.
I see that recently you bought the RCX.
What became your schmidt camera and other large SCT ?
With your new experience, are you convinced by the (much) better quality of
this RCX design ?
Have you publish somewere a short review based on your experience of both
designs ?

Thierry
http://www.astrosurf.org/lombry


Instrument(s): Meade 12" RCX 400 Telescope
CCD Camera: Yankee Robotics Trifid-2, 6303E
Exposu Optec LRBG filters, 100:30:30:30 minutes
Guiding: Meade DSI controled by MaxIm DL
Location: Plano (Dallas), TX
Image Processing: MaxIm DL, Aip4Win V2.0, Photoshop, RC-Astro Gradient

http://galaxyphoto.com/NGC891_RCX_Yankee.htm

--
-Jason Ware

---------------------------------------------------------
VISIT MY ASTROPHOTOGRAPHY HOMEPAGE!!
ASTRO IMAGES FOR DOWN-LOAD, TIPS, REPRINTS
URL: http://www.galaxyphoto.com
---------------------------------------------------------
My Other Hobby....High Power Rocketry
URL: http://www.galaxyphoto.com/rockets

--
--
-Jason Ware

---------------------------------------------------------
VISIT MY ASTROPHOTOGRAPHY HOMEPAGE!!
ASTRO IMAGES FOR DOWN-LOAD, TIPS, REPRINTS
URL: http://www.galaxyphoto.com
---------------------------------------------------------
My Other Hobby....High Power Rocketry
URL: http://www.galaxyphoto.com/rockets