Bird
Post Laureate
Reged: 08/07/03
Posts: 3866
Loc: Murrumbateman, Australia
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I had the best nights viewing of my life tonight. After several nights of poor seeing from my home, I made the decision to pack up the scope and head out of town - I had wanted to try a site about 10k out of town, and this was the best excuse.
By 10pm the scope was cool and ready to go, the wind had dropped completely, and the seeing was steadier than I have ever seen it. Mars went for long periods of time with *no* visible turbulence at all.
I have raw frames from tonight with more visible detail than some of my processed stacks :-)
There is about 15Gb of data to sort through, but before I head off to bed I wanted to quickly process one of the sets and post something. I hope to improve on this.
cheers, Bird
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Deep Sky Optics 16" f/4 composite
Royce 16" conical f/4
Royce 14.5" conical f/5
Deep Sky Optics 13.1" conical f/5.5
PGR Grasshopper Express / Flea3 / Dragonfly Express / Dragonfly2
RedHat Linux + Coriander
http://www.acquerra.com.au/astro/
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Bird
Post Laureate
Reged: 08/07/03
Posts: 3866
Loc: Murrumbateman, Australia
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Okay, so I couldnt resist fiddling a bit more...
Bird
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Deep Sky Optics 16" f/4 composite
Royce 16" conical f/4
Royce 14.5" conical f/5
Deep Sky Optics 13.1" conical f/5.5
PGR Grasshopper Express / Flea3 / Dragonfly Express / Dragonfly2
RedHat Linux + Coriander
http://www.acquerra.com.au/astro/
Edited by Bird (08/28/03 08:25 AM)
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Anonymous
Unregistered
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...you make me wanna cry.....
there i was, in the evening of mars's close encounter, very very clear and steady weather...better then..well in a long long time.
my girlfriend asked; "Are you gonna watch tonight? Tonight it is closest, you know that"
And i said "no"
..
....
..
yes it's true; i was very very tired, had to get up very early for work, forgot my notebook from work so i couldn't get pictures (stupid stupid stupid)
BUT WHAT WAS I THINKIN?
..and now seeing such a BEAUTIFULL picture!!! very very very nice Bird, i'll try to even it somewhere in 2240 
yes all those who had bad weather waiting for the clouds to go away; you may flame the hell out of me...
i'm getting depressed
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rboe
Reged: 03/16/02
Posts: 63466
Loc: Phx, AZ
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Move over Peppe and make room for me. I'll bring chips.
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Ron
NS11GPS
Pronto
16" dob
127mm F9 Surplus Shed/Crawmach kit scope
Coronado SolarMax 40 on a Celestron 102 Wide Field
Best of ATM
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Gary BEAL
Pooh-Bah
Reged: 05/10/03
Posts: 1330
Loc: New Zealand
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Yes Peppe, mee to, and I will also bring chips, Mars will always be there, she may not.
Man Bird, that is a honey.Shows what determination, abuse, and down under sites can do. YES.
Wait till Charles sees it, I have just seen his posting on the Normandie shot.
Gary
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Visit my homepage: http://www.totalwebsolutionz.co.nz/zeissnut/
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Charles
Post Laureate
Reged: 06/12/03
Posts: 4111
Loc: Enterprise, AL
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Excellent...Excellent Pictures.
I can say no more other than excellent! Taken by a true amateur and his equipment! He set up his own equipment, guided it to Mars himself, decided what exposure to use, focused the scope and camera himself and finally processed the pictures with his own equipment and software!
Charles 
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Bird
Post Laureate
Reged: 08/07/03
Posts: 3866
Loc: Murrumbateman, Australia
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lol you guys make me laugh :-)
I've just crawled out of bed, so I'll process a bit more before heading off to work for a few hours.
I can only get about 300 images into registax before it barfs - I think I need to buy some more ram. Some of the runs last night were 1000 frames (900Mb) :-)
Now I can that I know what "perfect seeing" looks like. Mars just sat there, no shimmer, no bouncing-around, nothin.
If I hadn't run out of power, and filled my hard disk, then I would probably still be there now :-)
be back soon...
Bird
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Deep Sky Optics 16" f/4 composite
Royce 16" conical f/4
Royce 14.5" conical f/5
Deep Sky Optics 13.1" conical f/5.5
PGR Grasshopper Express / Flea3 / Dragonfly Express / Dragonfly2
RedHat Linux + Coriander
http://www.acquerra.com.au/astro/
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rboe
Reged: 03/16/02
Posts: 63466
Loc: Phx, AZ
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Registax runs on a Commador?!
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Ron
NS11GPS
Pronto
16" dob
127mm F9 Surplus Shed/Crawmach kit scope
Coronado SolarMax 40 on a Celestron 102 Wide Field
Best of ATM
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Gary BEAL
Pooh-Bah
Reged: 05/10/03
Posts: 1330
Loc: New Zealand
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Darn Bird,
now the secret is out. I could never get the giants (jupiter especially) to sit still. Mars at the zenith requires a very poor night before it is as bad as Jupiter at 35 or so degrees.
I am waiting for that perfect night as well, and boy I will use up all 40gb of HDD.
Gary
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Visit my homepage: http://www.totalwebsolutionz.co.nz/zeissnut/
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Oldfield
Postmaster
Reged: 03/20/02
Posts: 6310
Loc: Hong Kong
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great shot! mine are still registax'ing.
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The Home Astronomer from a city where most people are proud of the light pollution
Toys: Tele Vue Ranger, GOTO Mark-X, Lumenera LU070M, Canon 10x30 IS...
My observation log and ideas My General Blog
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Oldfield
Postmaster
Reged: 03/20/02
Posts: 6310
Loc: Hong Kong
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poor seeing again, the Mars is not round in nearly half of the raw frames.
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The Home Astronomer from a city where most people are proud of the light pollution
Toys: Tele Vue Ranger, GOTO Mark-X, Lumenera LU070M, Canon 10x30 IS...
My observation log and ideas My General Blog
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Charles
Post Laureate
Reged: 06/12/03
Posts: 4111
Loc: Enterprise, AL
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Thats a great picture Oldfield and I give you credit for the bad weather.
Charles
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Uncle Burnout
super member
Reged: 08/06/03
Posts: 115
Loc: California (Bay Area)
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Quote:
I hope to improve on this.
Bird,
Don't touch it! It's OK to "improve" bad weather pictures with con/decon, but this one is good enough that it should just be left alone. Excellent work and I'm glad you finally got a break in the weather.
Thanks,
Burton
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Bird
Post Laureate
Reged: 08/07/03
Posts: 3866
Loc: Murrumbateman, Australia
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Hey Burton - I guess what I meant was "I think there are better sequences in the raw data, and after I've had a few hours sleep I can go look for them"
:-)
That image is about as good as it's going to get, I think.
cheers, Bird
--------------------
Deep Sky Optics 16" f/4 composite
Royce 16" conical f/4
Royce 14.5" conical f/5
Deep Sky Optics 13.1" conical f/5.5
PGR Grasshopper Express / Flea3 / Dragonfly Express / Dragonfly2
RedHat Linux + Coriander
http://www.acquerra.com.au/astro/
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Bird
Post Laureate
Reged: 08/07/03
Posts: 3866
Loc: Murrumbateman, Australia
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Hope you get good weather soon Oldfield. I know the pain of bad seeing.
However, speaking of good seeing, here's more from last night. I bought an extra 512Mb ram for my PC, so I can stack more frames now :-)
Excuse the orientation - rotating costs me too much detail, so I left it alone.
Bird
ps I just noticed that the time is wrong - it should say 15:11 UTC.
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Deep Sky Optics 16" f/4 composite
Royce 16" conical f/4
Royce 14.5" conical f/5
Deep Sky Optics 13.1" conical f/5.5
PGR Grasshopper Express / Flea3 / Dragonfly Express / Dragonfly2
RedHat Linux + Coriander
http://www.acquerra.com.au/astro/
Edited by Bird (08/28/03 11:07 AM)
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**DONOTDELETE**
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Bird, what telescope and equipment did you use for all of those great shots?
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Bird
Post Laureate
Reged: 08/07/03
Posts: 3866
Loc: Murrumbateman, Australia
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John - I have only one instrument:
250mm dia. f/6 "planetary" newtonian (small secondary),
Losmangy G-11 mount.
The above image taken using a TouCam Pro at prime focus with the addition of a TeleVue 5x powermate for effective f/30.
600 raw images were captured & stored as BMP's.
Images taken using qastrocam under linux onto a Dell inspiron laptop, transferred to a fast PC for processing using Registax for aligning & stacking, Astra Image for deconvolution and the Gimp for final colour balance adjustments & add the text.
cheers, Bird
--------------------
Deep Sky Optics 16" f/4 composite
Royce 16" conical f/4
Royce 14.5" conical f/5
Deep Sky Optics 13.1" conical f/5.5
PGR Grasshopper Express / Flea3 / Dragonfly Express / Dragonfly2
RedHat Linux + Coriander
http://www.acquerra.com.au/astro/
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Oldfield
Postmaster
Reged: 03/20/02
Posts: 6310
Loc: Hong Kong
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Bird, I always rotate my ToUCam before pressing the Capture button... it's way better than post-processing to rotate it back.
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The Home Astronomer from a city where most people are proud of the light pollution
Toys: Tele Vue Ranger, GOTO Mark-X, Lumenera LU070M, Canon 10x30 IS...
My observation log and ideas My General Blog
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Bird
Post Laureate
Reged: 08/07/03
Posts: 3866
Loc: Murrumbateman, Australia
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Yep, I just forgot to do it this time :-)
Bird
--------------------
Deep Sky Optics 16" f/4 composite
Royce 16" conical f/4
Royce 14.5" conical f/5
Deep Sky Optics 13.1" conical f/5.5
PGR Grasshopper Express / Flea3 / Dragonfly Express / Dragonfly2
RedHat Linux + Coriander
http://www.acquerra.com.au/astro/
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Bird
Post Laureate
Reged: 08/07/03
Posts: 3866
Loc: Murrumbateman, Australia
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Here's one from earlier in the night. The quality is a bit lower, but I got Olympus Mons - probably my main goal of this whole opposition was to get a good look at that :-)
You can't see it, but one of the moons is in the image also - it shows up in the wavelet filters in registax, but its too faint to see with the naked eye. It's off the bottom right of the planet.
I'll see if I can enhance it more so that it's visible.
cheers, bird
--------------------
Deep Sky Optics 16" f/4 composite
Royce 16" conical f/4
Royce 14.5" conical f/5
Deep Sky Optics 13.1" conical f/5.5
PGR Grasshopper Express / Flea3 / Dragonfly Express / Dragonfly2
RedHat Linux + Coriander
http://www.acquerra.com.au/astro/
|
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