From imaging the Horsehead nebula to equipment test!

[willis]

Last Friday Lewis & I went to PTC because of the good sky condition. My target was Horsehead Nebula. My main scope is Equinox 120 ED. As my AstroTech flattener got zero power, the effective focal length of Equinox 120ED was 900mm. It might be difficult for a 350mm guide scope to guide it. In fact, a walk by stargazer said that it may be difficult to have successful guiding. My reply was that let’s try and see.
Good days die young. After I finished the setup, clouds with gaps started to appear! I spent two 3 mins exposures to locate Horsehead. Then I set the exposure time to 6 mins, but I never get a single 6 mins exposure without clouds interference! I tried for about 2 hours and finally the sky was totally covered by clouds! So I pack up the equipment disappointedly! So disappointed that I even forgot to take the dark frame! So what’s left? I only got one single noisy 3 mins exposure! The s/n is so low that I can hardly process the color out. This Horsehead would not be good anyway, but it is possible to use LVI to guide a 900mm scope with a 350mm guide scope. I wouldn’t say the guiding is perfect, but it is pretty good already. See the full size image.

[社長]

350導900有什麼大不了? Dr Lee 早已用355導900拍10分鐘了，人家焦距才長你5mm，但多拍你7分鐘，已超過EQ6 Pro一個渦桿週期了

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=109

你是否受了什麼刺激要證明什麼的? 若人家老是要搬出一大堆理論去挑戰你，那先請他出示自己拍具說服力的照片不就成了嗎，let the photo speak for itself, don't speak for the photo，你忘了嗎

[Lewis]

350導900有什麼大不了? Dr Lee 早已用355導900拍10分鐘了，人家焦距才長你5mm，但多拍你7分鐘，已超過EQ6 Pro一個渦桿週期了

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=109

你是否受了什麼刺激要證明什麼的? 若人家老是要搬出一大堆理論去挑戰你，那先請他出示自己拍具說服力的照片不就成了嗎，let the photo speak for itself, don't speak for the photo，你忘了嗎

Before say "Let's the photo speaks for itself, let's the sky knows we are taking photo."

It's poorly said that the sky said "No" at that day.

[社長]

no, I mean asking that person who challenge Willis all the time, show some nice photo made my himself, rather than TALKING theory and criticizing other people all the time.

Being in engineering field for long time, what I learnt is, if I can ONLY choose one, I prefer to follow "wrong" advice (if that's really wrong) and deliver good, repeatible and duplicatable results, rather than following "right" advice (if that's really right) and get only poor results. In technical applications, like astrophotography , wrong or right is relative.

When you understand how German make top of the world optics, how Bisque brother design Paramount equatorial mount which is the highest loading to self-weight ratio mount in the market, without doing finite element analysis, how their T-Point also applied to Hawaii observatory and achieve subarc second pointing accuracy, how APM-LZOS delivery dirty scratched optics with air bubble casted inside the glass but beating all super clean Japanese optics.... we have to accept such "non-scientific" way of doing things, and the one who succeeded, will become master of the field and start granted the right to define what is right and what's wrong.

We all insiders found Roland Christen the owner of Astrophysics telescopes speak quite a lot on optics but very arguable, and we know he don't buy top grade glass from Ohara, but the quality of Astrophysics refractors speak for himself, so we better silient until we do better than him, reasonable?

Now with LVI successful examples pop up all around, within and outside Hong Kong, from different people with no common background, and all of them show very nice and well IMPROVED images after at most one or two trials, can I say the LVI and the way of using I suggested will help most people delivering good, repeatible and duplicatable results?

Well, there are exception of course, like one Paramount ME users who can't get his LVI work after a year and yelling all the time on different forums, complaining he has brought rubbish, complaining he don't get free upgrade to LVI II (anyone ever got free "firmware upgrade" from Canon 40D to 50D?), but I am sure if he spend a few minutes and see how other successful users get their LVIs work beautifully, he will get his work in minutes. There is only one way to learn from successful people on how to succeed, and many way to learn from losers on how to fail, but what we need is get things work, and yes, being humble and avoid super-ego.

In short, you have to choose who you are listening to - you should Listen to the one who ACHIEVED good result that you want to achieve and evaluate if you can repeat the method he has used, but not listen to the the one who present good result but with method you can't duplicate, and of course never the one who just TALK or the one who only yells.

[funoooo]

都係那一句。"以和為貴！"

[社長]

funoooo 大家年紀相若，建議你重讀中學國文課那篇《中山狼傳》。

[funoooo]

funoooo 大家年紀相若，建議你重讀中學國文課那篇《中山狼傳》。

無言............