March 2015 – Magic Shirt Astronomy

Winter Star Party Results – Part 2

Phase 3 – Initial Test with the AT10RC

Since things went well on the testing with the 110 testing, I moved ahead with testing the AT10RC, windy conditions be damned. Initial efforts were hampered in two ways. The first issue was a collimation problem with the after-market Moonlight focuser that I have installed on the scope. For some reason, it’s collimation is substantially off. Since I purchased the Moonlight focuser second-hand on the Mart, I can’t fault Moonlight for this problem, but through several tests, I was able to confirm that it was the focuser, itself.

(Note… this focuser is on its way to Moonlight for diagnosis)

In the interest of forging ahead with testing, I collimated the best I could, but the collimation was not satisfactory.

AT10RC Test Image at WSP - NGC 3628 — AT10RC Test Image at WSP – NGC 3628

The second issue was only discovered on the spot when I couldn’t reach focus with a Telecompressor in my train… the Astro-Physics 27TVPH. I had all my adapters lined up, including a custom part from Precise Parts, but the overall assembly was a bit too long to come to focus. Of course, all of this messing around caused my camera orientation to change often and render previous efforts at telescope collimation moot. I will follow up more with this focal reduction and Moonlight focuser effort in a later blog.

In any event, I decided to plow ahead with marginal collimation and at the native focal length of 2000mm. The result is the first image in this article. It is a stack of 6 10-minute sub frames. The camera is my SBIG setup shot at 1×1 binning (somewhere around .6 arcsec/pixel). Despite the poor collimation, and the lack of flats to calibrate these frames, I am very encouraged by potential of this setup.

AT10RC Test Image at WSP - NGC 4438, Binned 2x2 — AT10RC Test Image at WSP – NGC 4438, Binned 2×2

I also grabbed a few frames of NGC 4438 in Markarian’s chain at 2×2 binning. I only was able to grab 4 10-minute frames before morning twighlight.

There is still some work to do with the AT10RC besides addressing the focuser collimation and getting the reducer to work. I also need to refine guiding parameters, and may need to adjust the OAG pickoff mirror a bit more into the light path. But for a first test run, I am pleased.

Phase IV – Fun Stuff

Just for the fun of it, I am re-posting the images from this page… both images have arrows indicating asteroids that were captured. The first shows a bright asteroid, 1133 Lugduna as well as several other fainter trails. The second image shows Princetonia again, having moved closer to the subject galaxy from the capture in the previous blog post from the night before. Hopefully this asteroid stuff will become old hat, but it is pretty fun right now.

Note that you can see an animation of the image containing 5 asteroids here.

Image Through 110 Scope from Previous Night Showing how far Asteroid Princetonia Traveled

Winter Star Party 2015 Results – Part 1

The Setup

So I changed a number of things all at once. Not in a controlled, engineering way, but in a desperate Northeast Amateur Astronomy way that reflects precious few clear nights each year. Because I was heading off to the WSP with no opportunity to test my new Astro-Physics 1100GTO mount on targets more distant than the basement ceiling, I was determined to be happy with getting things up and running. Any images I was able to capture would be icing on the cake. And it would be warm.

In addition to the coming out party for the 1100, a major change from last season is the switch over to Sequence Generator Pro (Main Sequence Software) for image acquisition and session management. An immediate benefit of the switch to SGP is the opportunity to exploit their automated focusing routine. If all goes well, this will replace the clunky operation of slewing to a bright star to do manual focusing with a Bahtinov mask and then slewing back to reacquire the target. To slightly complicate things further, I am moving away from AstroTortilla’s blind solver as the primary plate solving tool and on to PinPoint as the main solving engine with Astrometry.net as the blind fail-over solver.

And finally on this trip, I wanted to test out an AT10RC scope that has been patiently waiting in storage for a ride on the new 1100. My plan was to test it both at native focal length and reduced with an AP Telecompressor (the 27TVPH).

So… I felt that if I could get most of these things tested and successfully running, it would be a very successful week. And it would be warm.

Phase 1 – SGP

2015 Test Image from WSP - M1 — 2015 Test Image from WSP – M1

As with any image in any of these blog entries, you can click on an image once to get a full browser view and click on it again to get a full, original resolution view. Click your browser’s “back” button to return here.

This M1 capture was the first capture with SGP. The main goal, other than actually using SGP was to use SGP’s focus routine. And getting the paths and file naming figured out. And interfacing with PHD2. And… well, you get the idea. M1 isn’t particularly suited to 770mm of focal length, especially when reduced to 616mm at f/5.6, but it was high overhead at the right time. This quick capture is a stack of 7 15-minute frames of Ha data. This isn’t cropped and shows pretty nice (but not perfect) star shapes all the way to the edges of the 8300 chip.

Phase 2 – Plate solving

2015 Test Image at WSP - Base of Markarian Chain — 2015 Test Image at WSP – Base of Markarian Chain

Phase 2 included everything that was in the first phase, and added the variable of plate solving with PinPoint under SGP. For this target, I plate solved an image that has been a work-in-progress for the last two seasons, then allowed SGP to center the scope on that target by using PinPoint. The original target image is at the bottom of this post. All of the parameters are not completely settled, there may still be an issue between JNOW and J2000, and the fail-over solve is very slow right now. But the successful PinPoint solves were amazing… a second or less. Very cool and lots of potential.

This second image is made up of a stack of 9 10-minute sub frames. As with the first frame, the scope is a WO 110FLT reduced with the WO AFR-IV flattener/reducer. Camera setup is all SBIG: ST-8300, FW8 with Astrodons, OAG with st-i guide cam.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but I also captured the first asteroid that I realized I have captured… In this case it is 508 Princetonia… it is indicated in the crop from the larger image. Not that it is earth shattering, but it was additional spice to the testing week!

My reference image from last season used as reference for this season's test image — My reference image from last season used as reference for this season’s test image

Unintended Asteroid Catch

While doing some testing of a new set up at the Winter Star Party, 2015, I took a few quick shots of part of the Leo Triplet (NGC3628). I happened to catch Asteroid 1133 (Lugduna) and tried to make this little animation. Click on the image and wait for a moment for it to load.

After you look for a minute, you can find at least 4 more asteroids moving in a similar direction… all appearing near to the galaxy.