"Unleashing the the Imaging Monster" with a Meade DSI II OSC

Prologue

"NGC3242: Ghost of Jupiter Planetary in Hydra (top) and M97: The Owl Planetary in Ursa Major""

The long slumber is over. I tried to surpress it, but I can no longer hold it back. It started off as quick shots of the moon and the milky way with a standard bridge digital camera. This escalated into a dedicated deep sky imaging CCD camera. About a year ago I started on this quest, to take images of the our wonderful night sky. My first stop, naturally, was those modified webcams that could be used to take pics of the brighter members of our solar system with a non motorized mount. I figured I would ease my way into the realm of astrophotography. To that, I purchased a Orion Star Shoot Moon and Planetary Imager II. Did not know what I was getting into. Getting the camera to work with my existing scopes itself was a challenge. I quickly learned that one cannot simply attach a camera to the eyepiece of a non motorized telescope and get good images (or images for that matter as the scope needed sufficient back focus!!).

"M62: Black Eye Galaxy in Coma Berenices"

As fate would have it, I chanced upon a cheap Meade Deep Sky Imager I One Shot Color (DSI I OSC) camera on Astromart. That camera coaxed the imaging beast from within, one that was always there, simmering and waiting for a chance to be unleashed. Once a visual observer, I am now more of an astroimager (even though I still stay true to my visual roots and take an hour or two out of every dark sky session to drink in the faint starlight). As a result my observing habits changed. My most used scope went from my big 10" f/5 dob and Celestron/Vixen C6 to a 102mm GOTO Celestron NexStar. This small nifty scope enabled me to spend more time enjoying the views, while imaging or sketching. I also could hit more objects in a night than I previously could. Together with this scope, and camera, I spent countless of nights under Pinos and Malibu skies, imaging as I went along. I spent more than a year with my first DSI I OSC. It was a constant companion of mine, and it went with me everytime I went observing. I was amazed at what it could do, even with my limited equipment and knowledge. My problem was always its limited FOV and small images. The camera worked great. It was just inadequate for larger, sprawling objects. I did do some wide field imaging with a 70mm Celestron Travescope OTA mounted on my NexStar mount.

 

"M101 (top), M81 (middle), M82 (bottom) galaxies in Ursa Major"

Enter the Meade DSI II OSC 

"M105 group (top), M95 (middle) and NGC2903 (bottom) in Leo"

After some soul searching a decision was made to actively seek out a CCD with a bigger imaging chip that was within budget. Enter the Orion Star Shoot Deep Space Imager II, which had a bigger chip and TEC cooling. Found one for cheap on Astromart so I bit the bullet and purchased it. The camera got as far as my light polluted playground and a single trip to Malibu. The camera was heavier and bigger and used a different image capture software, the industry standard MaxIm DL.  But the camera and software proved to be not as user friendly as the Meade DSI I OSC and the Envisage software. I then put it back up on Astromart and the camera was sold in a flash. Back to the drawing board and my lil Meade DSI I OSC. Then fate came a knocking once again, I found my first camera's older brother, an upgrade, the Meade DSI II OSC with a larger CCD chip and a temperature sensor for dark frames. On testing, the camera performed as well as its little brother. It had the additional advantage (compared to the Orion SSDSIII) of being similar in size, weight and simplicity to the Meade DSI I OSC. I had found my ideal camera (for now)!!!!!!!

"Meade DSI's I (left) and II (right) OSC side by side"

Meade DSI II OSC specs:
Model / Part Number:
Deep Sky Imager II / 04526  
CCD Sensor:
High Sensitivity Color Sony EXview HAD CCDT Sensor (ICX429AKL)  
Chip Dimensions Pixels:
5.59mm (w) x 4.68mm (h); 8mm diagonal (type 1/2) 752 x 582 pixels (437,664 pixels)  
Pixel Size (in microns):
8.3 microns (w) x 8.6 microns (h)  
Temperature Sensor:
Built in temperature sensor measures degrees in celsius and matches it to each dark frame  
A/D Conversion :
16-bit (greater image depth and contrast)  
Min. - Max. Exposure Time:
1/10,000 of a second to one hour  
Housing:
Anodized die-cast aluminum  
USB Compatibility:
High Speed 2.0 and 1.1  
Size / Weight of product:
3.25" x 3.25" x 1.25"/ 10 oz. 

"M94 (Top): The Croc's Eye, M106 (middle) and M63: The Sunflower (bottom) Galaxies in Canes Venatici"

Three weekends on and I finally plucked up the courage to sell my old faithful. I rather it go to someone who would use it heaps, like I did when starting out with astrophotography. This is an awesome lil camera to start with as it greatly reduces the learning curve and can still generate some really pretty snapshots of the deep sky! My only regret with it was not playing around with different image formats. I did not push my lil camera to its limits!!!!!

"M83 galaxy in Hydra"

So after some initial testing from light polluted skies, and experimenting with different file formats (FITS vs TIFF vs BMP) with the Meade DSI II OSC, the imaging bug struck me even harder, much like Mjolnir! I spent the last two weekends imaging from my preferred site, Solstice Canyon park in Malibu.  Seeing how my usual blog goes, I will do a writeup after my dark sky session. I figured I do things a little different this time and write about my experience imaging with the Meade DSI II instead. In total I spent 7 hours imaging and visual observing.

"M84/86 and a portion of the Markarian's Chain in Virgo"

And we are off for some imaging at Malibu 27th March and 5th of April 2014 

"M53 Globular (top) and NGC4565 Galaxy in Coma Berenices"

I spent the eve of Cesar Chavez's day (27th of March) and last Saturday (5th of April) imaging from Solstice Canyon at Malibu. Conditions were rather nice. It was not windy at all, as it was all through Dec, Jan and Feb, and it did not get very cold until midnight hit. Also everything ran oh so smoothly. The mount was humming along just fine and dandy, hitting every object pretty much center or slightly to the left of the FOV on both nights. On most objects, I did not even need to put in the eyepiece to frame the object and then refocus. All I had to do is slew, hit the left or right buttons three to four times and whala...object acquired! The DSI II was also performing very well, as was the laptop. No stalling, no hanging and no frequent updates (the night prior to these two trips were just a weird night when nothing went right). The only small hiccup I encountered was losing some good frames on the 27th of March. I am not quite sure what happened, but that was one of the reasons why I went back this 1st quarter weekend to bag more objects. And I was there late as well since we had a dinner party to attend in Irvine.

M51: The Whirlpool Galaxy in Canes Venatici"

As far as the sessions went, I bagged all the objects I had on my list. Starting at Leo, I polished off NGC 2903 (although I wished I had the better frames, this was one of the objects that did not get saved properly). Then went on to do some old faves such as M81/M82/M97 in Ursa Major, M83 in Hydra, M3/M64 in Coma Berenices and M44/M67 in Cancer. All in all, I managed to go much deeper than with the DSI I. I think this is partly to do with the file formats since I was experimenting with FITS at 32 bit and TIFF at 16 bit. It was here that I learnt that somehow the color balance gets skewered when I save stuff in the FITS format (and combine all four channels, luminence, red, green and blue in MaxIm DL....this is very evident with my M82, M97, M64 and M83 shots pictured in this blog update). Weird? You tell me. Another revelation was that the DSI II had less amp glow than the original DSI I, so I could coax more detail out of the darkness of the frame.

"M12 (top) and M10 (bottom) globulars in Ophiuchus"

When the laptop battery finally died (usually last about 2 hours or more) I went to visual with the Astroscan and the 102GT. The Astroscan is just so easy to use, even easier than the SkyScanner. My fave eyepiece in this one is the 13T6 Nagler. Spent a good amount of observing time looking at all the galaxies (the Leo galaxies M65/M66; M95/M96/M105, Virgo's Markarian chain of galaxies, Coma's galaxies M64, The Blackeye Galaxy; NGC4565, Canes Venatici galaxies M51, The Whirlpool Galaxy; M106; M63, the Sunflower galaxy and M94 as well as big papa bears galaxies M81/M82.

"M8: The Lagoon Nebula in Sagittarius"

Last Saturday was a rushed job as I only got there at 1.30am and imaged all the way till 4.30am, with some visual breaks in between to look at the glorious summer milky way. Can never get enough of M8, the Lagoon Nebula; M20, The Trifid Nebula;, M17, the Swan Nebula;, M16, The Eagle Nebula. Overall a very happy camper. The aim of my next trip therefore will be to re-image summers best and brightest......M20, M17, M16, M57 and M27.......as well as some of the Virgo group of galaxies.....

"M4 Globular (top) and NGC6302: The Bug Nebula (bottom) in Scorpius"