Hi All, just giving everyone a heads up that Lightbuckets.com are giving away a free hour on a 20" scope in New Mexico, you just have to sign up on there website then apply for the free hour.
I've booked my hour to image Thors Helmet
Details can be found here :-
http://www.lightbuckets.com/newsarticle/22/free-telescope-time--test-drive-lightbuckets-today/ (http://www.lightbuckets.com/newsarticle/22/free-telescope-time--test-drive-lightbuckets-today/)
Daniel
:O)
Thanks Daniel for that my request got approved!
I got my approval earlier today. but Im going to wait till the moon is less bright.
Daniel
:O)
yay :-)
Same here (not yay!)
Be careful when you align the target on the chip projection in the software, my targets showed clearly they would fit on the chip and they did not!
Booooo.
How much was it out by?
about 25%
be carefull I did M65 & M66 and they are both just off the chip, if you have a look at it as standard without rotating it you will see it will fit.
I wrote to the boss, you never know he may let me do it again.
also they do give you bias and darks, from reference so you will need to dark scale or sigma combine.
chris
Not too good then - good job it was free as you'd be well annoyed...! What did the star field come out like....?
Chris, thats a real bummer, I'd say you have a good case for another hour.
From light buckets
"Hi Chris-
As Alvin explained below, if you don't select a guide star for exposures over 180 seconds on LB-0005 our guide lock system will kick in and find one for you. It found one at 76 degrees and rotated the instruments to get the guide star on the guider chip. This changed the framing of your target. If you compare the attached rotated SkyView window at 76 degrees with your image, you'll see that the framing is dead on. For most of our observatories, even though all of our instruments are extremely dialed in on polar alignment, guiding will kick in on any exposures over 300 seconds just to minimize any risk of trailing (it is 180 seconds on LB-0005 for some other reasons). If you use LightBuckets again, it's probably better to pick your own guide star in SkyView rather than have us pick it for you. This way the framing works out how you want it. Hope this helps, please let me know if you have any questions.
Cheers,
Steve"
Chris, what exposures did you use, I found that when I tried to set up an RGB run at 2x600s each I couldn't do it because you have to include setup time into the run aswell.
Daniel
:O)
Just got my free hour :cheesy:
5x300 second luminance, that was about it for an hour :o
My imaging plan is submitted ;-)
Hint: Once you have selected your target, SkyView appears with 2 green rectangles - the little green rectangle is the guider. If the star within it appears red then it will use it for guiding. You can move the star field around a bit and 1 or 2 other red stars may appear - you can click on one of these to set the orientation with that red star in your guider.
Chris, I guess you didn't select the guidestar and so it just chose one itself which mucked up your carefully arranged FOV.
It appears that not all the stars in the SkyView plot can be used for guiding - I'm surprised how few can be.
Mark
Did you find a way to submit a plan for imaging in the next few weeks rather than straight away?
Daniel,
I set mine to run at "Best Available Time" - I didn't actually schedule it for a particular time. It hasn't run yet but I can see it there in my Accounts section, waiting to run. For the next few nights my target will be close to the moon so it'll be interesting to see if they hold off for a while.
I also note that in spite of being nighttime, LB-0005 is currently offline due to "Cloudy Skies"!
Mark
Just had an e-mail saying that my run started but diddnt finish due to bad weather, and has been rescheduled for the next best time. :roll:
So its not just london that has cloud.
Nice to know :cheesy:
Ahhh, good to know that actually, I've scheduled mine for near the end of the month, so good to know that I'll be able to have it re-scheduled if the weather goes all british!
This time it appears to be offline because of high winds. I wonder if NM really is such a good place to house a 'scope?
Mark
And today it's offline because of cloud. Will my imaging plan be executed before the promotion ends? Watch this space ...
good eh, got mine 1st time but pointed it the wrong way, you are stuffed because of the weather!
And again - offline because of cloud.
I'd better tell me missus the move to New Mexico is off. They get the same weather we do.
I wonder if it snowed there as well last night.