Posts Made By: Joe Gafford

Louie, we at 40 north know this fellow, but not as sharp as your rendition. 8) Excellent image. 8) Joe.

Greg, it depends. I shoot with a ST-2000XM as well. But I shoot with Newtonians. The filters are matched to have the same thickness and refractive indexes. The advantage of the filter wheel is the added selection of filters eg. H-alpha narrow band to bring out the red emissions better. I seen a lot of images on this forum with the H-alpha, OIII, and SII filters stacked onto the LRGB to get enhanced eye candy! And they were done with refractors like your Borg.
Check which filters you got with the camera. The red and green filters in my ST-2000XM do not cross each other possibly to act as a skyglow filter (Custom Scientific). This is true with all of the 1.25 filter sets sold by SBIG. My luminance filter is actually a clear filter that extends into the IR and UV regions. Usually not a problem with reflectors. The Astrodon set does come with a true luminance filter. Check this link to the SBIG filter page.

http://sbig.com/sbwhtmls/online.htm

I seen your test shot of of the LMC with the Tarantula. I noticed there are artifacts in the corners probably due to the polar alignment and/or a clear filter used as a luminance filter on a refractor problem.
We will have to wait till you get a better shot this week without the Moon. Recheck the flat frames as well.
This is a good camera to start cutting teeth with.

There is a remote guide head available for these cameras that usually is attached to an off-axis guider or guide scope to guide without going through the filters.
Due to the inconsistent drive errors in both of my Newtonian mounts, I never used the guide chip, but they are manually guided. I've done 35mm colour film images with my scopes long before switching to CCD camera. The colour emulsions available changed over time according to the whims of the film manufacturers causing colour shifts! The CCD cameras are more consistent in that regard.
Clear skies! Joe.

M27, 18" f4.5 JMI reflector 10, 10, 7, 10 minute LRGB respectively.

Here is another source for solar cells and charge controllers.
http://www.icpsolar.com/

However the ICP charge controllers work on systems greater than 1 amp charging. I use two of their older 1200 series panels with their older charge controller for my Aunt's cabin with a 115 ah battery. It has been going for three years and with someone leaving the attic lights on over this past winter!
I used their older 350 ma panel to charge a 5 ah set in my NGT-18 power panel (240 ma max draw with drives and secondary dew zapper) and managed to murder by overcharging! Remember 90% of the lead acid batteries don't die by 'old age', they are murdered!
The effect of it was shown this past winter when the low battery alarm went off a dawn at first then I started losing 1/2 hr per night.
I could not find a solar cell charger that handled less than 1 amp. I then took apart a 2 stage, 1 amp "wall wart" AC charger I got from Mouser Electronics and attached wires for the small solar charger to the two 'spare' lug terminals the thing had and got it to work on the 350 ma solar cell.
My career was in electronic repair, DO NOT attempt taking apart an AC Supply if you don't have the proper formal electricity and electronics (EE) training!

Larry, another good dark sky is the Okie-Tex starparty held Sept. 16 - 24 in the OK panhandle. It is the darkest site I've been to lately. Good food, good facilities. Check the link below. Joe.

http://www.okie-tex.com/

Richard, it depends what you mean by zooming to something not on the current screen. If you zoomed in too far, you may get a black screen. In that case, go to Orientation, click to Zoom to, in the drop down pick the zoom level. Or hit one of the N E S W buttons on the taskbar, it will put you in a 100 degree field, near the horizon at one of the cardinal points.
That is just one of the zooming.
What specifically do you mean? What did you zoom to?
Joe.

Jim, nice core. The outer disks is two-tiered and will show up on longer exposures. You are showing the effects of the brighter disk. There is more of this object than meets the eye! 8O
Joe.

Also, there is a "Yuri's Night '08" celebration there as well.
See below for details and other locations.
Joe.

http://www.yurisnight.net/2008/party-central/find-party.php

All, I been monitoring TSP from another list. I missed this year's TSP, the first time since 1991. The days were hot and dusty, the nights were clear except last night. They had a big grass fire with high winds 20 miles west of them last night and the glow plus smoke was quite evident in a photo. Another entry had the fire resume again this afternoon at 11:00AM after the winds picked-up.
Hope for the best for these folks! Joe.

Nice, Dietmar. It is known as Coddington's Nebula, discovered by Edwin Coddington in 1898 at Lick observatory. It is the only IC object discovery to his name.
Joe.

Stereo version using JPM's Photoshop stereo actions.
Parallel: