S Migol's photostream Pro User

M97 and M108 as seen on May 12 & 14, 2013. Taken at Montebello OSP on two nights. There was a third night that had bad data because of clouds and accidentally leaving the camera on ISO 400.

Standard setup: SV4 and cooled Pentax K10D DSLR. My first real use of the cold-finger modified camera outside of the back yard. Thermostat was set to -10C and the EXIF temps read 14-15C on the warmer night and 10C on the cooler night. I also added flocking material to the inside of the flattener to help control off-axis flare. This latter modification seems to help significantly.

Flats were generated using the LED panel but I'm considering that these are not really flat. I'll probably make a flat box repurposing the LED panel to give better and wider flats for consistency.

Getting much better results with flexure, too. I've been able to mostly fix the flexure, now I just have field rotation to control.

Image data is from 20 subs of 1200 seconds duration at 100 ISO. Guided and calibrated with Maxim. Stacked in DSS. Processed in PI.

Here's the plate solve:
Resolution ........ 1.909 arcsec/pix
Rotation .......... 91.658 deg
Focal ............. 655.81 mm
Pixel size ........ 6.07 um
Field of view ..... 1d 59' 44.1" x 1d 21' 27.4"
Image center ...... RA: 11 12 47.265 Dec: +55 21 17.86
Image bounds:
top-left ....... RA: 11 17 14.653 Dec: +54 19 58.40
top-right ...... RA: 11 17 53.471 Dec: +56 19 32.53
bottom-left .... RA: 11 07 55.809 Dec: +54 22 17.64
bottom-right ... RA: 11 08 05.781 Dec: +56 21 58.91

M97 and M108 as seen on May 12 & 14, 2013. Taken at Montebello OSP on two nights. There was a third night that had bad data because of clouds and accidentally leaving the camera on ISO 400.

Standard setup: SV4 and cooled Pentax K10D DSLR. My first real use of the cold-finger modified camera outside of the back yard. Thermostat was set to -10C and the EXIF temps read 14-15C on the warmer night and 10C on the cooler night. I also added flocking material to the inside of the flattener to help control off-axis flare. This latter modification seems to help significantly.

Flats were generated using the LED panel but I'm considering that these are not really flat. I'll probably make a flat box repurposing the LED panel to give better and wider flats for consistency.

Getting much better results with flexure, too. I've been able to mostly fix the flexure, now I just have field rotation to control.

Image data is from 20 subs of 1200 seconds duration at 100 ISO. Guided and calibrated with Maxim. Stacked in DSS. Processed in PI.

Here's the plate solve:
Resolution ........ 1.909 arcsec/pix
Rotation .......... 91.658 deg
Focal ............. 655.81 mm
Pixel size ........ 6.07 um
Field of view ..... 1d 59' 44.1" x 1d 21' 27.4"
Image center ...... RA: 11 12 47.265 Dec: +55 21 17.86
Image bounds:
top-left ....... RA: 11 17 14.653 Dec: +54 19 58.40
top-right ...... RA: 11 17 53.471 Dec: +56 19 32.53
bottom-left .... RA: 11 07 55.809 Dec: +54 22 17.64
bottom-right ... RA: 11 08 05.781 Dec: +56 21 58.91

Comet PANSTARRS as seen on Sunday night/Monday morning.

My only photo of this object so far. I resisted the chances to take pictures of it earlier in the season. Only once I was able to see it when up at Montebello through Yangzhe Liu's telescope did I finally take the picture.

This is the sum of two 10 minute exposures tracked on the comet. I'd never tracked on a comet before and was pleased to see that Maxim kinda did OK with it. Had to stack in DSS with only two exposures and the software didn't automatically pick up on the comet location. I just stacked without alignment.

Calibration was done in Maxim with some old, non-matched darks that I had. Thus there are hot pixels and bad amp glow that I removed by cropping.

Final processing in Pix Insight and a pass through LR3 to remove a flare from Errai.

Same hardware setup as I usually use: SV4 with the modified and cooled Pentax K10D camera set to ISO 100.

My experiment with 1600 ISO film on Comet Hyakutake back in 1996.

Probably shot with a 50 mm lens on my Pentax K1000 camera. Note how long the tail appears.

Digitaized by taking a picture with a DLSR on a lightbox illuminated by a strobe. Inverted by LR3. I've tried to set the white balance by estimating the color of the sky by what light-polluted clouds would look like and the color of the comet in the other pictures.

The great comet of 1996, Comet Hyakutake, as seen in NC skies. I captured this on Kodak Gold ISO 200 film. Probably a 10 minute exposure of unknown focal length, most likely 200mm since I had a Sigma zoom at that time.

Digitized by using the Pentax K10D dslr on a lightbox with a flash and gel. Inversion and curves done with LR3.

I wasn't very kind to the negatives over the years and thus there's dust and scratches on them. I also didn't document the location or the time of year.