GerhardB

Antonio, Lukus , Thank you very much for the nice comments. @Antonio: Though you have a few 'hot spots' in Spain, in many parts of your country light pollution is much less dramatic than in most parts of Europe. Luckily you found yourself a dark spot - according to the light pollution map very similar to Nerpio, though later is at a higher elevation (1800). @Lukas: Since MLPT cannot be automatized in the current version of Sequence, I have to rely on an autoguider, Waiting eagerly for the new release ... Best regards, Gerhard

Hi Gerald, Very nice images, I like all three of them. I wished my first Hubble palette image would have looked like yours ... Best regards, Gerhard

Hi, This image was captured with the ASA 20" Cassegrain near Nerpio/Spain, one of the darkest locations in Europe. The long focal length (4400mm) and the quite reasonable seeing of 1.3" nicely resolved the fine filaments of this nebula. Large and larger. Best regards, Gerhard

Thank you, Matts. The signal-to-noise ratio you get under these skies is just amazing. The fast scope helps too, of course Best regards, Gerhard

Hi, I spent one week around new moon in Namiba, where I experience perfect conditions for six nights. The first object (of a few more to come) is famous M20. Because of its high position near the Zenith it shows a lot more of the blue reflection nebula than at our lattitudes in central Europe. Medium size Large size. Best regards, Gerhard

Hi Erik, I use the same configuration as you (except The Sky) and have no problems using the park command in CCDCommander. The SW through ASCOM can only use the coordinates saved in Position 1. There can be a 180deg. confusion in Az. between softwares, I would suggest that you move your telescope manually with the slew buttons in Autoslew to the desired position and then save it as your park position 1. Worked for me. Best regards, Gerhard

Hi Thomas, You are right, no more Pinpoint after the first step. It has been a while that I used this method Thank you for the clarification, Gerhard

Hi Michael, As soon as Maxim DL knows the focal length of the telescope and the the pixel size of your camera it will be able to calculate the pixel resolution of your system. When Maxim DL has been setup properly with this information, it will write it into the header of the fit-file every time you make an image. It is also essential that Maxim is connected to your telescope to be able to write the center coordinates of the image into the fit header. The only step left for you is making a Pinpoint run with your first image and do a calibration ( under the telescope tab of the observatory window). After that centering a star should work. For the rest of the other images you only have to repeat the Pinpoint step, without calibration. Best regards, Gerhard

Exactly, Matt. Best regards, Gerhard

Hi Matts, By measuring the FWHM of a few unsaturated stars in Maxim DL. Best regards, Gerhard

Hi Matts, Unfortunately the performance of FocusMax is seeing dependent, and the writers of CCDAP suggest to estimate the focus offsets on a night of good seeing. Theses nights are extremely rare at my location, so I made a series like you did, calculated the mean values and used them as a starting point for finetuning by visual inspection. The CFZ is not as critical as one would think because of above mentioned seeing effects and shifted with my average seeing of 2.5" - 3.5" to a value of ~20microns. As a side note, Phillip Keller's new ( and hopefully soon to come) version of Sequence should contain its own autofocus routine which compensates for the degrading effects of seeing. Best regards, Gerhard

Hi Dave, Thank you for your nice comments. The details of the exposures are listed on my website. My approach was to comine long and short exposeres to get a deep image on the one side and a fully resolved and not overexposed core on the other side. Best regards, Gerhard

Hi Wolfgang, Great images! Adding an IR-channel to the M8 image is an interesting and fresh approach to this well known object. Best regards, Gerhard

Hi Bill, The focal shift Delta can be computed with this formula: Delta = (1 - tan alpha'/tan alpha) * D, D = thickness of filter alpha = angle of incoming light from vertical direction alpha' = angle after refraction in glass For small angles ( like in our case) you can make the simplification: tan alpha' ~ sin alpha' tan alpha ~ sin alpha Snellius refraction law: sin alpha'/sin alpha = 1/r which leads us to Delta ~ (1 - 1/r) * D For r = 1.5 we get Delta/D = 0.333 Best regards, Gerhard

I saw a screenshot ( http://www.astrooptik.com/asa/Chart32Screenshot.jpg) of the new (beta) version in a german astro-forum and according to Philipp's description it will allow automatization of the whole image capturing process, including MLPT. It even has its own autofocus routine which is supposed to work better than FocusMax. Looking forward to get my hands on it ... Best regards, Gerhard

Hi Matts, Great images with excellent post processing. Are you planing to add a SII-channel in the future? Best regards, Gerhard

Hi Jeffrey, This is an amazing achivement under this amount of light pollution, the nebula is quite prominent in your image. Post processing is very good, though there is still some noise visible in the full resolution version. Pixinsight offers several noise reduction methods, which - with the right choise of parameter settings - work very well and unobstrusive. Best regards, Gerhard

Thank you very much, Antonio!

Cristina, Thank you, too

Matts, Michael, Thank you very much Gerhard

Hi, A showpiece object, which I have not visited for a long time. My goal was to get a very deep image while avoiding a burn out of the bright center. Bigger version: http://www.pbase.com/gbachmayer/image/150329382/original Best regards, Gerhard

Hi Tim, Because you use the mount like a DPM160, I would expect that the 'Equatorial Fork' -configuration is the right one. Best regards, Gerhard