Mike Lewis
Staff Member
So in addition to my gear at Starfront Remote Observatories in Texas, I still have some gear at my friend's house in Green Valley, AZ that I also control remotely. Due to my friend's availability (I cannot image from there when he is not home) I have gotten much less usage out of that setup, but it does have quite a bit more reach (over 5x the focal length of my refractor in Texas) and so can allow me to get much closer views of some smaller objects. One of those type of targets that has been on my acquisition list for quite a while is called Thor's Helmet (NGC 2359). Up until recently I had been shooting this larger magnification scope at 1645 mm FL (only a ~3.6x bump in FL from my refractor). I liked those results, but was prompted to try it out at native focal length (2350 mm FL). At that level of magnification the scale is pushing the level of seeing available and the precision of guiding. I am still not sure I like the results, as stars are inevitably bigger, and the things just do not look as sharp (something I tend to obsess about in the first place). But with all that said, I do like this result on this iconic target, which actually does not quite fit in the FOV at this focal length. I may try to prevail on my friend to switch my configuration back to using the reducer so I can image this target with that setup to see which I like more. But in any case, this is posted here for some initial feedback. I have not yet even completed the tabulation on all the subframes used, nor have I posted this anywhere else yet, so no additional links.
This was made using ~10.5 hours of data in Hα, and Oiii with RGB data for the stars...Any and all feedback is most appreciated as I try to decide how I am liking the results from this scope at native focal length.
ML
This was made using ~10.5 hours of data in Hα, and Oiii with RGB data for the stars...Any and all feedback is most appreciated as I try to decide how I am liking the results from this scope at native focal length.
ML
