Blackrock?

Great work Dave! Thanks for sharing it.

Top class animation as usual. Keep em comin.

Nice one Dave,
is it slightly out of focus, or was it hazy/bad seeing?

Dave - its actually a result of a slightly out-of-focus image stack, compounded by the compression algorithm... The full animation is about 5mb.... Its still out of focus but better than the current animation on the website...

Cheers

Dave

Dave, I know we discussed this before in some thread somehere!

I've always noticed than in some of your images that the brighter star images are bigger than you might expect. Now I know your focus IS spot on. You can see that clearly from the nice tight small size of the fainter stars. But I'm wondering about your UV/IR filter. Is that integral to the DSI or do you use an external one? If its internal can it be easily removed? I just think you could get a very cheap and quick performance increase. Just interested on your thoughs on this.

The old IR filter chestnut

The DSI comes with an IR filter. I'm not sure of the quality of the filter itself (other than the materials used are OK) and it simply fits over the square hole just above the CCD chip. You then screw the nosepiece over it.

I found that the IR filter is a real dust magnet - whenever I have used it, I just cannot get rid of the motes - and there are substantial amounts of them. Its easier to keep the CCD coverslip clean than both the CCD coverslip and the IR filter. I've had the DSI in place for a few months now with no dust motes. But with the IRfilter, it was real pain.

So, I stopped using it.

Of course, it also adds additional exposure time to imaging - but that may be minor - a few percent maybe.

I was going to get my hands on a 1.25" quality IR filter or possibly another dual filter - ie IR plus another wavelength or range (light polution filter perhaps). But I haven't gotten round to it yet.

I guess if I had my heart set on taking better pretty pictures, I'd be more motivated to sort it. But I'm more interested in the science images so bloated stars don;t give me major heartburn It only really spoils an image when you have a bright star in the same FOV as your target...

Maybe one day I'll get motivated

Cheers

Dave