I¡¯ve been working with Myron Wasiuta and Pete Laky to test the new Station 3 telescope and color camera at the Mark Slade Remote Observatory. They have been doing all the hard work, and I have been doing processing at my home in Crozet, VA.
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Although the Station 3 scope/color camera (510mm StellarVue SVX 102T-Raptor with ASI 2600MC duo camera), is not fully operational, the results so far are stunning!
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At my request for comparison and merging purposes, some of the Station3 test images were collected over DSO targets that I imaged last year at 560mm from my patio here in Crozet. I am using a Canon 7D mark II camera body with a Canon 100-400mm II zoom lens at 400mm plus a Kenko 1.4x teleconverter to yield a 560mm, f/8.0 system. I have this camera mounted on a StarAdventurer tracker. Even with good polar alignment, errors in alignment and tracker motor, without any auto-guiding, limit my exposures from 30 to 60 seconds, with ISO ranging from 1600 to 6400. I still need to correct minor star trailing in each image prior to stacking. I try to collect at least 45 to 60 minutes of integrated time.
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Because I need to dig deep into the dark end of the histogram of the Canon stack of sub-images to pull out faint DSO detail, bright stars tend to be bloated. By comparison, 5 minute guided exposures using the Station 3 scope are sharp as a tack, and a one hour stack looks great. What I did find is that the colors, especially in the blue wavelengths, are a bit better with the Canon 7DII sensor than the Sony imx 751 chip in the Station 3 camera. Of course, sky transparency plays a big role in the results, especially in the blue wavelengths.
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By re-sizing and rotating the images, I could process and merge images from both the Canon equipment and the MSRO Station 3 equipment, and then do additional processing on the merged image. The ¡°soft¡± Canon image details in outer galaxy arms smoothed out some of the noise in the Station 3 images, and the combined colors are better than either image alone.
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Here are a couple of examples. I eagerly await the Station 3 scope being fully operational when 2, 3, and even 4 hours of sub-images can be collected.
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M81/M82
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M106
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