ASTRO: ML4022 first light and some "interesting objects" in the image

A consulting project I have been involved in for some time recently needed a
KAI4022 based camera for some quantitative optical studies so we ended up
purchasing an FLI Microline 4022 camera

This past weekend I decided to use the camera for astronomy, not having used
the KAI series very much in the past.

I picked the AP180EDT f/9 for using it, since it was set up in the backyard
with the Proline 9000 and filters already. I just replaced the camera with
the Microline and shot

I ended up imaging vdB142, a familiar object I have imaged many times using
emission line filters and an object in a good part of the sky at sundown.

the 7.4 micron pixels of the microline give me 0.94 arc-sec/pixel at the
1620 mm focal length and that's a nice image scale for the seeing
conditions.

They are a bit slow in the red filters due to the lower QE of the sensor
compared to the KAF9000 or KAF6303 so after 10 hours of exposure things are
a bit noisier than I would like. Still the camera is a lot of fun to use and
the antiblooming makes for much easier shooting.

The 12MHz download speed makes for easy flat shooting: those flats come down
really fast: I can get a set of all three filters really fast compared to
some of my older and slower cameras

all in all I like the little Microline ML4022. It is pretty basic in terms
of functionality but works well and I was able to operate at -30C with a 75F
ambient.

here's the first real image:

http://www.narrowbandimaging.com/vdb...2hao3_page.htm

I think I will do a Photon Transfer plot soon to see what the read noise,
camera gain, PRNU, DSNU and full well parameters measure out to be.

But here is why I posted this he there are three interesting objects in
the image besides the "proplyds" i had previously noted back in 2006

Have a look at the image at the bottom of the page linked above:

Liebrecht Venter, Dana Patchick and I have been examining them. The noted
objects appear as stars in the red, blue and IR plates from ESO so that
probably means they aren't planetaries, but the strong Ha signature (green
channel) makes me wonder if there's potentially a nebula in at least one of
them. (upper left candidate perhaps)

I'll toss them out for the group to examine.

Richard,

very good picture and interesting to see that you found something that
deserves closer inspection.
Something slightly lower than 1 arcsecond/pixel is indeed a good scale as it
allows for sharp pictures without too much processing. Going too much below
1"/pixel can get frustrating if the seeing doesn't cooperate...

The 30% QE of this chip at Halpha is probably not the optimum for narrow
band, but your picture shows that it still allows for good Halpha shots. I
will probably buy a camera with the KAF 8300 chip, which has a QE of 48% at
Halpha. Still not as good as my SXV-H9 camera, but at least the larger chip
will finally give me the chance to go for the larger objects.

Stefan

"Richard Crisp" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
m...
A consulting project I have been involved in for some time recently needed
a KAI4022 based camera for some quantitative optical studies so we ended up
purchasing an FLI Microline 4022 camera

This past weekend I decided to use the camera for astronomy, not having
used the KAI series very much in the past.

I picked the AP180EDT f/9 for using it, since it was set up in the
backyard with the Proline 9000 and filters already. I just replaced the
camera with the Microline and shot

I ended up imaging vdB142, a familiar object I have imaged many times
using emission line filters and an object in a good part of the sky at
sundown.

the 7.4 micron pixels of the microline give me 0.94 arc-sec/pixel at the
1620 mm focal length and that's a nice image scale for the seeing
conditions.

They are a bit slow in the red filters due to the lower QE of the sensor
compared to the KAF9000 or KAF6303 so after 10 hours of exposure things
are a bit noisier than I would like. Still the camera is a lot of fun to
use and the antiblooming makes for much easier shooting.

The 12MHz download speed makes for easy flat shooting: those flats come
down really fast: I can get a set of all three filters really fast
compared to some of my older and slower cameras

all in all I like the little Microline ML4022. It is pretty basic in
terms of functionality but works well and I was able to operate at -30C
with a 75F ambient.

here's the first real image:

http://www.narrowbandimaging.com/vdb...2hao3_page.htm

I think I will do a Photon Transfer plot soon to see what the read noise,
camera gain, PRNU, DSNU and full well parameters measure out to be.

But here is why I posted this he there are three interesting objects in
the image besides the "proplyds" i had previously noted back in 2006

Have a look at the image at the bottom of the page linked above:

Liebrecht Venter, Dana Patchick and I have been examining them. The noted
objects appear as stars in the red, blue and IR plates from ESO so that
probably means they aren't planetaries, but the strong Ha signature (green
channel) makes me wonder if there's potentially a nebula in at least one
of them. (upper left candidate perhaps)

I'll toss them out for the group to examine.