From last Saturday night out at Black Rock Canyon National Park in Colorado. It's warming up a bit here, so its getting more enjoyable at night, it only dipped to 38 degrees during the night but I believe it was around 60 when I was setting it up.
This was mainly a test. A test that I hoped I would still get usable data from, but it was a test. I have the Askar Fra500 scope that I use. I had at the time also bought the reducer for it, which brings the focal length down to 380mm and to f4.5 I think. I have had the scope and the reducer since Christmas, but have never used the reducer. I think in part because I am still new to Astro, and there seems to be this drive to see as close and as tight as we can to an object to get as much detail of it as possible. So as I was imaging all of these new objects, I wanted to get close and tight, so the idea of shooting wider just never fit into my mindset. I kept telling myself before an imaging session that I was going to install the reducer into the scope, but the draw of getting tighter would always win out.
Anyway, this last Saturday with the moon at 80% I decided no matter what, I was going to use the reducer, and I finally did! It was my first time using the reducer, and it's pretty simple to install, it slides into the scope, and then has a separate fitting that holds it in place and has the threads so that I can connect my filter drawer and then camera to it. One of the biggest challenges was that I new by installing the reducer, it would change the focus point on the scope, so that could take a bit of time to find. The scope extends up to 7" for focus. So to slowly turn the focus knob for that whole 7" could take some time as I didn't want to pass by the focus. And in fact, I did the first time as I was backing the focus out. So with it extended all the way, I slowly moved the focus tube (if you will) back into the scope and within an inch of moving it I saw my first fuzzy stars, and then it was easy as I let the Auto Focuser take over from there for the fine tuning.
Now the only issue with shooting wide, is that it's galaxy season, so there are not too many nebula up, especially larger nebula early in the night. I wanted to test out the wider view on Rho Ophiuchi which is around the star Antares. But it didn't get high enough up into the sky until about 1am. So IC 1396 which houses the Elephant Trunk was a viable one that came up high enough about 10pm. I probably should have waiting and installed the reducer at midnight, but I wanted to install it still during daylight since it was my first time using it.
I had processed the Rho Ophiuchi first, but after processing it a couple of different ways, I came to the conclusion that the moon was still at enough of an angle that it reflected into the scope and caused this huge round lens flare in the middle of the image. The funny thing was that I didn't see the lens flare actually until I removed the stars. So after playing with that for a couple of days, I decided to leave it alone as I wanted to make sure that perhaps it wasn't the moon and maybe a lens defect? So I then jumped onto this one which was captured earlier as I stated, and thankfully IC 1396 did not have any lens flare in it!!! So it was the moon.
Enough with the boring talk.
The dark nebula turned out darker then I think they usually should. With an 80% moon, I think this isn't perfect, but I think it's a decent good first pass at processing this one.
40 - Lights at 180 secs with the Optolong L-Enhance Filter
30 - Flats
30 - Dark/Flats
10 - Darks
iOptron Gem28
ZWO ASI2600mc Pro
ZWO 120mm Mini - Guide Camera
Askar Fra500
Stacked in Pixinsight
BlurXterminator
NoiseXterminator
StarXterminator
Processed in Pixinsight and Photoshop
All comments are welcome,
Jim
This was mainly a test. A test that I hoped I would still get usable data from, but it was a test. I have the Askar Fra500 scope that I use. I had at the time also bought the reducer for it, which brings the focal length down to 380mm and to f4.5 I think. I have had the scope and the reducer since Christmas, but have never used the reducer. I think in part because I am still new to Astro, and there seems to be this drive to see as close and as tight as we can to an object to get as much detail of it as possible. So as I was imaging all of these new objects, I wanted to get close and tight, so the idea of shooting wider just never fit into my mindset. I kept telling myself before an imaging session that I was going to install the reducer into the scope, but the draw of getting tighter would always win out.
Anyway, this last Saturday with the moon at 80% I decided no matter what, I was going to use the reducer, and I finally did! It was my first time using the reducer, and it's pretty simple to install, it slides into the scope, and then has a separate fitting that holds it in place and has the threads so that I can connect my filter drawer and then camera to it. One of the biggest challenges was that I new by installing the reducer, it would change the focus point on the scope, so that could take a bit of time to find. The scope extends up to 7" for focus. So to slowly turn the focus knob for that whole 7" could take some time as I didn't want to pass by the focus. And in fact, I did the first time as I was backing the focus out. So with it extended all the way, I slowly moved the focus tube (if you will) back into the scope and within an inch of moving it I saw my first fuzzy stars, and then it was easy as I let the Auto Focuser take over from there for the fine tuning.
Now the only issue with shooting wide, is that it's galaxy season, so there are not too many nebula up, especially larger nebula early in the night. I wanted to test out the wider view on Rho Ophiuchi which is around the star Antares. But it didn't get high enough up into the sky until about 1am. So IC 1396 which houses the Elephant Trunk was a viable one that came up high enough about 10pm. I probably should have waiting and installed the reducer at midnight, but I wanted to install it still during daylight since it was my first time using it.
I had processed the Rho Ophiuchi first, but after processing it a couple of different ways, I came to the conclusion that the moon was still at enough of an angle that it reflected into the scope and caused this huge round lens flare in the middle of the image. The funny thing was that I didn't see the lens flare actually until I removed the stars. So after playing with that for a couple of days, I decided to leave it alone as I wanted to make sure that perhaps it wasn't the moon and maybe a lens defect? So I then jumped onto this one which was captured earlier as I stated, and thankfully IC 1396 did not have any lens flare in it!!! So it was the moon.
Enough with the boring talk.
The dark nebula turned out darker then I think they usually should. With an 80% moon, I think this isn't perfect, but I think it's a decent good first pass at processing this one.
40 - Lights at 180 secs with the Optolong L-Enhance Filter
30 - Flats
30 - Dark/Flats
10 - Darks
iOptron Gem28
ZWO ASI2600mc Pro
ZWO 120mm Mini - Guide Camera
Askar Fra500
Stacked in Pixinsight
BlurXterminator
NoiseXterminator
StarXterminator
Processed in Pixinsight and Photoshop
All comments are welcome,
Jim
