Equipment:
CGE Pro/C11/Orion ST-80/Nikon D5300/QHY5
Miqaela’s Celestron AVX/C8/Borg
76ED/Miqaela’s Nikon D3200/Miqaela’s ZWO ASI120MM
Yes, I
got all of this equipment set up and running!
It actually more or less worked, unbelievably. [I borrowed Miqaela's AVX mount and ZWO ASI120MM]
The
Texas Star Party skies were not quite as dark as I’d imagined when the sun
finally did set. I could still pick out
constellations without too much trouble (as opposed to losing the main stars in
the sea of other stars), and I didn’t see any zodiacal light or anything. But the Milky Way was incredible. You couldn’t miss it. I could just stare and drink it in for hours. There was so little light pollution that the
clouds were black. It was amazing! You couldn’t even tell they were there
sometimes, just darkness dimming whatever you were trying to see through the
eyepiece.
I got the telescopes and
aligned and polar aligned, and while I was waiting for the clouds to clear, I
turned the C11 over to Jupiter to check it out.
I was actually able to focus it on Jupiter this time! Usually I can’t because of bad air. I looked at it with as high as a 13mm
eyepiece; higher than that, it was too fuzzy.
You could see the four cloud bands!
Then, finally, I started imaging around midnight, once the clouds
cleared out. First on the list for the
C11 was the Sunflower Galaxy. I played
it safe and did my usual 300-second subs, but dropped the ISO to 1600 at John’s recommendation – he said you can do higher DPI (dots per inch – you
want 300 for printing) with a lower ISO.
[Also, I finally came up with a standardized documentation scheme for my doc files this week - I'll start sharing the info that way in my posts.]
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Date: 22 May 2017
Location: Prude Ranch, TX - Texas Star Party
Object: M63 Sunflower Galaxy
Camera: Nikon D5300
Telescope: Celestron C11
Accessories: f/6.3 focal reducer
Mount: Celestron CGE Pro
Guide scope: Orion ST-80
Guide camera: QHY5
Subframes: 18x300s (1h30m), ISO-1600
Darks: 24
Biases: 20
Flats: 20
Temperature: 47-59 F
See on AstroBin |
While that was going, I experimented with the AVX to see how long I could track for. I realized earlier that evening that I only had one 2-inch connector for Schmidt-Cassegrains, so unless I wanted to deal with the extreme vignetting of using my 1.25-inch connector, I wasn’t going to be able to image on the C8. I had plans to try out Miqaela’s ZWO AS120MM CCD camera on it later in the week looking at a planet, but I didn’t want to do too much too soon, especially since I was already running two rigs. I just wanted to get things going first. So I attached Miqaela’s Nikon D3200 to the Borg after aligning with the C8 and took some test frames to check tracking. It wasn’t good. I attempted to guide with the ZWO on the C8, but the tracking was bad enough that with the tiny FOV of the ZWO on the C8, the stars were moving across the screen before my eyes, and PHD was throwing a fit about it. So I finally gave up and just mounted the D3200 piggyback on the C8 by threading a ¼-20 screw into it through the piggyback plate with like three washers so I could make it fit (thank goodness I keep all that extra crap in the white drawer Tupperware thing), threw my 55-200mm lens on it, and started imaging the target I’ve been dying to image all year – the Rho Ophiuchi Complex. It includes Antares, globular cluster Messier 4, star ρ Oph of course, and some beautiful nebulosity in several different colors. Set at 200mm, that wide of a FOV let me have two and a half minutes of tracking, so I took a frell ton of subframes on it and just imaged that all night. Both images came out pretty well in processing!
Date: 22 May 2017
Location: Prude Ranch, TX - Texas Star Party
Object: Rho Ophiuchi Complex
Camera: Nikon D3200 (Miqaela's)
Telescope: 50-200mm lens at 200mm, piggybacked on Celestron C8
Accessories: N/A
Mount: Celestron Advanced VX
Guide scope: N/A
Guide camera: N/A
Subframes: 44x90s (1h6m), ISO-1600, f/5.6
Darks: 20
Biases: 18
Flats: 0
There was so little light pollution that the entirety of my histogram
showing up in BackyardNikon for the Sunflower Galaxy (and all my other targets
that week) was contained entirely in the first third, even at longer exposure
times. It was insane! And I with pride put my light pollution
filters away in their cases and didn’t touch them all week. It was really nice not to have to
white-balance stuff besides alignment in DeepSkyStacker. Around 5 AM, I decided to snag some data on
M16, the Eagle Nebula, while it was nice and high. That came out well too, but kind of weird –
there’s a bunch of blue in it that I’ve never captured before.
Date: 22 May 2017
Location: Prude Ranch, TX - Texas Star Party
Object: M16 Eagle Nebula
Camera: Nikon D5300
Telescope: Celestron C11
Accessories: f/6.3 focal reducer
Mount: Celestron CGE Pro
Guide scope: Orion ST-80
Guide camera: QHY5
Subframes: 12x300s (1h0m), ISO-1600
Darks: 40
Biases: 20
Flats: 20
Sometime, I’m going to borrow the ASI120MM again and do just the
Pillars. That’d be legit!
Unfortunately, I
discovered that where I set up blocked the Milky Way until like after 1 AM or
so – I didn’t realize how far southeast it would be! I should have, that was my stupidity. I’ll remember that for next year. I also couldn’t see the collimation source
that TSP set up on the top of a nearby hill – it has a star for collimating,
and a special pattern for testing your resolution. I’d love to do that.
Also while my images
were going, and while there were still clouds around, I peaked through Derek’s
Dob at more stuff. I got my first
glimpse of the massive globular cluster Omega Centauri, which is too low in the
south to be seen from where I live, but just barely comes above the hills down in
Texas! It gets as high as 12
degrees. It was incredible! It contains millions of stars, possibly as
many as 10 million. We looked at it like
every night. I also got to see M104
Sombrero Galaxy, M51 Whirlpool Galaxy, globular cluster in Hercules M13, and
then the Lagoon Nebula through my C8 while I was checking out the goto. All fantastic, such detail against the dark
sky!
I also set up my D3100 to take some timelapse of
me, the scopes, and the rising Milky Way.
While the images were going, I also just took a bunch of single frames
on the Milky Way, as well as a long-exposure timelapse and several images to
attempt a mosaic on Photoshop. It didn’t
end up working, but I might try just using the central row (I did three rows)
and seeing if it can do it, or find some software that’s better at it. Here’s a single frame from the timelapse,
ISO-3200, 15 seconds:
Milky Way from Texas, Nikon D3100, 15s, ISO-3200
I finally collapsed
into bed around 6:30 AM!
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