2022-11-17, 06:21 PM
hi Greg,
Saint Mary's University offers the BGO to the public, to request images using social media. Students and researches get high priority and then the rest of us get queued up after them. You're right, we never know when the data will be captured. That said, there are maximum moonlight, minimum elevation, side of pier filters that can be adjusted to narrow down, a smidge, when things might happen. I've done a lot of imaging (over 630 requests) and timed a bunch of them in the "off season" i.e. the summer time when there were not a lot of students around.
An image request is submitted by some means, I regularly use a custom app, and sometimes email. The system supports Twitter and Facebook Messenger.
The target is typical specified by a supported catalogue ID or common name. For the Rosette, I chose a star near the middle, HIP 31130. SkyTools helped with that.
Initially I was using SkyTools 3 Pro with the 'scope and camera profiles configured. I knew the exact framing within the nebula. I determined that I would need a 4 x 5 arrangement with slight overlap to capture the main extent.
As mentioned, I used some trial and error test shots to determine the appropriate offsetting values to use. From the documentation: "This parameter offsets the telescope's position from its catalog position by the specified amounts in right ascension (offsetra) and declination (offsetdec). The values are specified as the percentage of the field of view (see the fullsize parameter above) and can range from -500 to 500 percent. Positive values of offsetdec move the position north and positive values of offsetra move the position east." It took me a little while to get that sorted.
I used:
horizontal offset +/- 75
vertical offset +/- 50
I submitted jobs using the following command:
#request
offset=?,?
object=HIP31130
minalt=48
"comment=Rosette Mosaic"
fullsize=yes
special=LUM2,60,10,HA,60,10,OIII,60,10
maxmoon=10
with the appropriate offset values... The LUM2, HA, and OIII indicates the required filter, which indirectly specifies the SBIG camera. The 10 subs for each filter are 60 seconds (that's the max).
I actually made a PowerPoint file with a screen grab from SkyTools, rectangles sized for the camera frame, and I used it to plan and track progress. See the blog post to get a sense of how I did that:
http://blog.lumpydarkness.com/2022/08/re...tures.html
The morning after an imaging run, the BGO does pre-processing. The light subframes are registered and stacked with flats and darks applied. A user receives a single FITS for each requested filter. I typically run with that. I stretch and convert with FITS Liberator and then assemble typically in Photoshop.
Here's a blog post from a recent acquisition.
http://blog.lumpydarkness.com/2022/10/co...-tile.html
Does that make sense?
Saint Mary's University offers the BGO to the public, to request images using social media. Students and researches get high priority and then the rest of us get queued up after them. You're right, we never know when the data will be captured. That said, there are maximum moonlight, minimum elevation, side of pier filters that can be adjusted to narrow down, a smidge, when things might happen. I've done a lot of imaging (over 630 requests) and timed a bunch of them in the "off season" i.e. the summer time when there were not a lot of students around.
An image request is submitted by some means, I regularly use a custom app, and sometimes email. The system supports Twitter and Facebook Messenger.
The target is typical specified by a supported catalogue ID or common name. For the Rosette, I chose a star near the middle, HIP 31130. SkyTools helped with that.
Initially I was using SkyTools 3 Pro with the 'scope and camera profiles configured. I knew the exact framing within the nebula. I determined that I would need a 4 x 5 arrangement with slight overlap to capture the main extent.
As mentioned, I used some trial and error test shots to determine the appropriate offsetting values to use. From the documentation: "This parameter offsets the telescope's position from its catalog position by the specified amounts in right ascension (offsetra) and declination (offsetdec). The values are specified as the percentage of the field of view (see the fullsize parameter above) and can range from -500 to 500 percent. Positive values of offsetdec move the position north and positive values of offsetra move the position east." It took me a little while to get that sorted.
I used:
horizontal offset +/- 75
vertical offset +/- 50
I submitted jobs using the following command:
#request
offset=?,?
object=HIP31130
minalt=48
"comment=Rosette Mosaic"
fullsize=yes
special=LUM2,60,10,HA,60,10,OIII,60,10
maxmoon=10
with the appropriate offset values... The LUM2, HA, and OIII indicates the required filter, which indirectly specifies the SBIG camera. The 10 subs for each filter are 60 seconds (that's the max).
I actually made a PowerPoint file with a screen grab from SkyTools, rectangles sized for the camera frame, and I used it to plan and track progress. See the blog post to get a sense of how I did that:
http://blog.lumpydarkness.com/2022/08/re...tures.html
The morning after an imaging run, the BGO does pre-processing. The light subframes are registered and stacked with flats and darks applied. A user receives a single FITS for each requested filter. I typically run with that. I stretch and convert with FITS Liberator and then assemble typically in Photoshop.
Here's a blog post from a recent acquisition.
http://blog.lumpydarkness.com/2022/10/co...-tile.html
Does that make sense?
cheers,
Blake
Blake