Tenerife
Trip of 17-21 October 2003
Click HERE for trip of 21-25 may 2004
Location: Parador Hotel, situated in the Teide (extinct !) volcano crater at over 7000ft above sea level.
Lat: 28° 15' 0" N, Long: 16° 35' 0" W
Jupiter rising over the volcano wall on 21 October 2003 at 04:09 UT
Present were Martin, Rob, Eddie & Nick
Pics were taken using a Starlight Xpress SXV-H9 on a Takahashi FS-60C, mounted on a Takahashi EM-200 USD 2 Temma mount. Exposures were all UNGUIDED - we took a lot of time to accurately drift align the mount. A Custom-Wheel was used, plus MaxIm and AstroArt software. Click here for equipment configuration
(390K) Click here for even larger image (1.1MB)
M31 colour, using the True Technology new RGB Type 2 filters (with integral IR-Block). Exposure times were L(3 x 3 mins), R:G:B (7:5:5mins). In retrospect, the B should have been 7 minutes, but despite this, Eddie "Fingers" Guscott has managed to pull some beautiful colours in PhotoShop®.
(363K)Click here for even larger image (1.8MB)
M42 colour taken with equipment as above. Exposure times L:R:G:B 3:5:4:4 mins.
(525K)Click here for even larger image (2.1MB)
Horsehead region taken with equipment as above. Exposure times L:R:G:B 3x3mins, 8:7:7 mins
(520K)Click here for even larger image (1.7MB)
Lagoon nebula taken with equipment as above. Exposure times L:R:G:B 3 x 5 mins, 8:7:8 mins
75 minute exposure of Teide volcano and Polaris region, using a Pentax 6 x 7 medium format camera and 55mm f/4 lens, with Fuji Provia 100 transparency film, hypered by Rob. Original scanned file was 135MBytes - a bit big, so the 'large' one here is 1/150 of original area !
The red trails at the bottom are those of our party members milling around, and the white trails behind are the headlights of distant passing vehicles.
This is a cut-out from the above 6x7 film, still not quite at the full original image scale on the screen. You can almost see the structure of the cable car pylons at right. At this image scale and detail, the full 6x7 image would occupy a poster around 10ft by 8ft. The 6x7 scanned image was 7600 x 6240 pixels, over 47 Megapixels.
Starfield - 20 mins with Pentax 6 x7 and 55mm f/1.4 lens
FS-60C with normal back, M43-T adapter, narrow Custom-Wheel with T-thread 'drop-down' adapter on front, SCT-T-LR adapter, SXV-H9. Note that there is no focal reducer in this shot, but normally it would screw directly onto the silver focus tube, otherwise the connection is identical. Note that at prime focus, ie without a focal reducer, you would not get perfect sharpness across the whole field. The focal reducer is also a field flattener, so gives a perfect flat field. *
FS-60C with 2" back and 2PFM-SCTM adapter on the front of the Custom-wheel, otherwise the same as the above. This has the advantage of being able to take the wheel and CCD camera assembly off directly by loosening the two thumbscrews on the 2" focuser, and an even bigger advantage that the clear aperture through the 2" system is 45mm (if a 48mm wheel is used). Thus huge fields of view could be obtained using this config. Points relating to a focal reducer are the same as in the first example.
In both the above examples the position of the focuser was for imaging an object about 50m away in daylight. For infinity focus there is still 6-10mm of 'spare' back-focus.
* at the time of writing, December 2003, Takahashi have discontinued manufacturing the focal reducer for FS60/FS78. A lot of pressure is being maintained to persuade them to go on producing the focal reducer and current signs are positive. We will update this page when we have further information
[ If you are interested in holiday accommodation on the coast, click HERE ]