[AZ-Observing] Re: NGC 281 - Hubble Palette
- From: Mike Wiles <mikewilesaz@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: az-observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 4 Sep 2012 09:10:17 -0700
*Hey Paul,*
**
*Thanks!! I'm pretty happy with this image, especially considering the
amount of thermal noise I'm fighting in the individual subframes in typical
August night time temperatures. *
*Have you tried any different color substitutions? How about a video of it
morphing from one color space to another?*
**
*I haven't tried any other colors with this image. I considered doing just
a H-Alpha and OIII mix, but haven't gotten around to messing with it. And
I definitely haven't attempted to make a video of it morphing color spaces.
:-).*
*Question: Did Autopilot carry out any 'meridian flips' during the exposure
runs? This causes image rotation of 180 degrees which has to be undone
before stacking*
*CCDAutoPilot (CCDAP) does indeed carry out the meridian flips. There were
multiple meridian flips in the final set of frames for each filter. CCDAP
also does a plate solve and resynch (if necessary) after each meridian flip
to ensure that I'm exactly back onto the target before continuing. But
that wasn't your question....over the last six months my workflow has
changed where I do nearly everything after the image is captured in
PixInsight. This includes calibration and stacking. During the
registration step of each image, PixInsight recognizes when an image has
been flipped and automatically flips it back so that it aligns correctly
with the reference image. Calibration/Registration/Stacking is quite a bit
more involved with PixInsight than other software packages (MaximDL,
CCDStack and Deep Sky Stacker), but I've found the results to be far
superior so it's worth the additional steps to me.*
**
*Question2: Does the OAG8300 guider chip allow any movement to look for a
guide star?*
*The OAG-8300 doesn't allow for movement to find a guide star. It is also
non-rotating. What it does have going for it is that SBIG has built a .7x
focal reducer into the OAG-8300 to provide a larger field of view for the
guide camera. I had some concerns that I'd find it difficult to acquire a
guide star with the slowish speed of my f/7.5 refractor. I upgraded the
guide camera at the same time to the 16-bit SBIG ST-i which I have found to
be extraordinarily more sensitive than my old 8-bit QHY5. I have found a
guide star on the first try every time with this setup thus far using a 3
second guide exposure. If I was still using the QHY5, I doubt I would have
been that lucky. MaximDL seems to be able to seperate the guide star from
the background very easily with the full 16-bit image and I've had no
troubles guiding on stars as faint as 11th magnitude thus far. *
**
*Mike*
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