Monday 10th December 2007

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Torn between karate or getting the scope out I opted for the scope as I hadn’t seen the sky for a couple of weeks. An early finish from work meant the scope was setup and ready for action by 6:30pm but as usual I left M57 on the screen to get an idea of today’s drift. To my surprise there’s not a great deal of movement in the image at the moment so I’m hoping to have a good evening at the controls.albirio_k3ccd_0008d.jpg 

From M57 I stayed looking west but moved on to Albireo the double with blue and yellow stars. It’s a nice target and allowed me to fine tune the focus as both stars are bright enough to give me nice diffraction spikes to focus with. A few frames here before moving on again to the Cat Eye Nebula.

cats_eye_neb_k3ccd_0009a.jpgI’d not tried the Cat Eye before so a nice surprise to find it visible while the camera was still set to 0.5 second exposures.

I have trouble with the camera, it’ll stop functioning but keep the last good frame on the screen so unless you watch a long exposure end and the next start you’d not notice there was a problem. The fix is to unplug the camera from the laptop, then reconnect. This usually results in a blue screen of death which then needs to be restarted, reload all the software and realign the scope. I’m hoping that when my Christmas pressent arrives I won’t get this problem any more. I’ve ordered the Atik 16IC mono so that I can see what a real astro cam can so. I can’t wait for it to arrive from Ian King Imaging but I’ve been told I can’t use it until Christmas.

I think I should check my wiring in the SPC900NC as I’m sure I never connected the circuit ground to the parallel port ground which may explain the erratic behaviour. I have to get this fixed as the SPC900 will become a guide cam hopefully.

Onwards and upwards, I’m currently imaging around the crescent nebula. I was here a few weeks ago but thought I’d try again and this time I’m taking frames around the central stars to try and capture more of the nebulosity.

I’m hoping for a galaxy or 2 tonight, so I’ll be heading Northwards towards M81 and M82 as soon as I have enough Crescent frames to piece together.

Watch this space…

Crescent Nebula

The camera played tricks on me again so I’ve struggled to get any images of the cresent, but have been able to stitch 2 together into a mini mosaic.

Friday 23rd November 2007

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The weather forecast was right, the temperature is dropping to -4 degrees C tonight. But while some moan and shiver I was straight out with the scope and had it all setup within 30 minutes of ariving home from work.  I’ve been imaging since about 6pm this evening, this being the first chance since adjusting the DEC axis. M56 the Ring Nebula

Initially I needed to fine tune the gear mesh but that didn’t take long and I had the scope locked onto the Ring Nebula in no time.  I took 320×20 second exposures and ring hovered around the center of the screen the whole time. It’s an improvement from images drifting off the edge of the screen, but still room for improvement. That said, my polar alignment was hurried and I didn’t take much time to balance the mount, so maybe the errors are as much down to me now and not the play in the mount.

The Owl Cluster (NGC457)I’ve gradually moved up the sky since my first alignment by slewing to a star then adding it to my n-star alignment list, then removing the lowest of the previous stars from the list. This way I’ve managed to get from Rasalhague to Ruchbah without having to realign the mount. I’m moving ever closer to Mirfak so I hope to finish with some comet images, but beofre then I’m working on M103, The Owl Cluster (NGC457) and I’m going to see if I can get the Pac-Man Nebula as well.

I’m still imaging so hopefully this entry will be updated before the night is over.

Friday 16th November 2007

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I’ve just had the DEC assembly off the EQ-6 following instructions on James Robert Cook’s site. This is where I found the instructions for the RA axis when I regreased that so I was happy to return here for help.

I packed the tapered bearing with grease and regreased the worm. Putting everything back together had me concerned when the bearing near the head of the mount refused to go back into its seat. I eventually tapped it home, very gently, with a small hammer and a rag. My concern was that the casting would crack but I couldn’t see why the bearing would come out so easily then fail to go back in. I know you need to have everything square as it’s a tight fit but like I say, a bit of a scary moment there.

All fitted back together nicely and adjusted the mesh with the power on so that I could make sure everything turned. Adjusting the mesh control grub screws allowed me to take the slack out of the axis and now I’m ready for the next clear night.

After adjusting the RA axis I had a few re-adjustment sessions before I was happy with the mesh, I think I learned from that but I’m still prepared for some fine tuning with the mount under load. A wise man would tell you to take the electronics out, remove the stepper motors and test the mesh with your finger but I like to familliarize myself with the mount a little at a time and had no intention of stripping the whole thing down.

Start to finish was no more than 1 hour, but I didn’t chemically degreased the gears or remove the smaller bearings, I was only interested in making sure there was little or no play in the axis, others will go further and suggest replacing the bearings, but I’m hoping that’s not required at the moment.

Job Done

Thursday 15th November 2007

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Holmes 17PM42The sky cleared and the temperature dropped last night which gave me a few hours of viewing. I picked up Holmes 17P which is fading as the coma expands and got a few random shots while I waited for the rest of the eastern sky to move upwards into my field of view. I got some cluster shots before noticing Orion had slipped into the gap between my house and my neighbour which gave me a chance to image M42 in colour for the first time.

Tonight is clear again and I’m sooo glad I’ve got remote control working, it must be -4 centigrade out there and it’s been +14 all day. That takes some getting used to!

I left the camera while I completed a DVD quiz with the family and found nearly 500 frames of holmes when I finally got back to it. The result is interesting in that I think it shows some erratic movement in my mount, surely all the stars should show the same arc when I stack using the comet core as my target? Instead I have strange curves, take a look:Holmes 17P

There not a lot of post processing gone into this, very little, so it’s a little rough around the edges.

I’m currently pointing the scope in the direction of the Perseus A galaxy which has several faint neighbours all within the SPC900NC’s tiny field of view.

I’ll come back to this post when I have more images, unless I freeze to the finder the next time I go out to realign everything.

M1
I’ve just done a quick processing of this M1, my best yet but still room for improvement. The mount just won’t track for long periods I think it’s time I had the DEC axis apart for a regrease as well, or maybe I should leave it intact and adjust the grub screws, anyway that’s for another time. Here’s M1 taken from a stack of 28x40sec frames.

M42And another M42, this one is is taken from a stack of 200×2.5sec frames. When I get some time I’ll reprocess this with selective frames, but for now it’s just a rough draft.

There are more but I won’t have time to process them tonight so I’ll leave them for another day.

Thursday 8th November 2007

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holmes17p_k3ccd_0081b.jpgIt’s currently very windy outside, but good seeing and only a few wispy clouds. I’ve been imaging Holmes(17P) again and have tried some trickery with image processing to bring out the internal structure of the comet nucleus. I’ve not had much success so far and after 45 minutes or so I slewed back to Mirfak and noticed the focus was out.  A quick trip out into the cold and everything is readjusted ready for the next avi capture.

holmes17p_k3ccd_0081c.jpgHere’s a pretty version of the comet after some extreme processing. I can’t tell you how I got to this, It was “unsharp mask” and “find edges” mostly, but I think you’ll agree it doesn’t look like all the other comet photos on the web!

I’m still imaging, so hopefully there’ll be some better images before the night is over. Watch this space (excuse the pun).

It didn’t take long for my luck to run out. It’s about 1hour since the last sentence and the clouds have moved in. I’ve packed everything away as I can’t risk getting the equipment rained on while I’m sat indoors unaware of the changing weather outside.

ngc457_k3ccd_0086a.jpgI was in the process of moving to NGC457 the Owl Cluster in Cassiopeiae when I realized the poor image quality was cloud not misalignment. I managed 1 frame from an avi of 30 but even that has been smeared a little by the wind. I’ve imaged this one before, it may have been the first open cluster I ever found through the eyepiece, and still draws me back. When I’ve imaged this with a mono camera I had no idea that some of the stars were different colours, and this poor single frame doesn’t do the cluster justice.

nucleus.jpgI have produced another over-processed Holmes which emphasizes the compression artefacts as much as anything else, but I like it anyway.