News / Nature
Malcolm Park – Astro photographer, located in the UK finds GRAS
Remote Deep Space Imaging from the UK
Global-Rent-a-scope (GRAS) is proud to present the work of Malcolm Park – Astro photographer, located in the UK.
Malcolm relates his own story as to how he joined GRAS for deep space imaging. Read about Malcolm's story as only he could describe the events that led him to GRAS.
Malcolm Parks
Malcolm writes:
"I’m a graphic design consultant by profession and a contributing photographer to a number of specialist image libraries. As a result of my work and photography I’m fully conversant with up-to-date digital photography capture and post-processing with dslr and medium format equipment.
I decided to take up a latent interest in astro photography about 4 years ago, spurred on by what I could see, on the web and in print, what others were achieving with the new digital equipment available. I live in London suburbs therefore light pollution is a major issue from my imaging site. For the first two years I was getting to grips with understanding the techniques required for ccd imaging and autoguiding.
I’ve now reached the point where I’m confident in the use of the astro equipment I have, a mix of telescopes suitable for widefield and deep imaging and the all important narrowband filters. I travel regularly to a location at 6,500ft in the French Alps and have
a portable set-up for summer imaging of the milky way region in truly dark skies. My home location in London is also beginning to give me some surprise results with narrowband mono and single shot colour imaging. The limiting factor, as always, in
the UK is the inconsistent weather pattern.
I came across the GRAS site while looking at another astro photographers work and decided to give one of the Australian telescopes a try. I chose the Takahashi FSQ (GRAS012) with SBIG STL 1100M camera and narrowband filters. The FSQ has a similar field to my Takahashi 180ED astrograph and the STL 11000 chip is the same size as my Artemis 11002 so I knew what to expect from the filed of view. My first try-out target was the Great Nebula in Carina, NGC 3372 at the civilized hour of 11.00am from London.
Well, I wasn’t disappointed. A relatively brief imaging run with 5 x Ha subs, 5 x OIII And 4 x SII subs yielded my narrowband version of NGC 3372 which I processed using The ‘Hubble palette’. I’m impressed and I’ll be back."
Thanks Arnie.
Many members of GRAS and the RAS Observatory routinely perform the following research activities: Astrometry, Photometry, CCD Imaging, Remote Astronomy, Robotic Astronomy, Supernova, Variable stars, doubles star research, binary star research, eclipsing variables, comet research, asteroid hunting, Astrophotography, Galaxies, Nebula, Planet, Space, Minor planets, deep space, Gamma Ray Bursters, Astroimaging, astroimager, photography
They use the following equipment to perform their activities: CCD cameras, scientific filters, technical experience, research, telescope mounts, optical systems, Paramount, Takahashi, SBIG, FLI, Astrophysics, CCD camera,
Malcolm relates his own story as to how he joined GRAS for deep space imaging. Read about Malcolm's story as only he could describe the events that led him to GRAS.
Malcolm Parks
Malcolm writes:
"I’m a graphic design consultant by profession and a contributing photographer to a number of specialist image libraries. As a result of my work and photography I’m fully conversant with up-to-date digital photography capture and post-processing with dslr and medium format equipment.
I decided to take up a latent interest in astro photography about 4 years ago, spurred on by what I could see, on the web and in print, what others were achieving with the new digital equipment available. I live in London suburbs therefore light pollution is a major issue from my imaging site. For the first two years I was getting to grips with understanding the techniques required for ccd imaging and autoguiding.
I’ve now reached the point where I’m confident in the use of the astro equipment I have, a mix of telescopes suitable for widefield and deep imaging and the all important narrowband filters. I travel regularly to a location at 6,500ft in the French Alps and have
a portable set-up for summer imaging of the milky way region in truly dark skies. My home location in London is also beginning to give me some surprise results with narrowband mono and single shot colour imaging. The limiting factor, as always, in
the UK is the inconsistent weather pattern.
I came across the GRAS site while looking at another astro photographers work and decided to give one of the Australian telescopes a try. I chose the Takahashi FSQ (GRAS012) with SBIG STL 1100M camera and narrowband filters. The FSQ has a similar field to my Takahashi 180ED astrograph and the STL 11000 chip is the same size as my Artemis 11002 so I knew what to expect from the filed of view. My first try-out target was the Great Nebula in Carina, NGC 3372 at the civilized hour of 11.00am from London.
Well, I wasn’t disappointed. A relatively brief imaging run with 5 x Ha subs, 5 x OIII And 4 x SII subs yielded my narrowband version of NGC 3372 which I processed using The ‘Hubble palette’. I’m impressed and I’ll be back."
Thanks Arnie.
Many members of GRAS and the RAS Observatory routinely perform the following research activities: Astrometry, Photometry, CCD Imaging, Remote Astronomy, Robotic Astronomy, Supernova, Variable stars, doubles star research, binary star research, eclipsing variables, comet research, asteroid hunting, Astrophotography, Galaxies, Nebula, Planet, Space, Minor planets, deep space, Gamma Ray Bursters, Astroimaging, astroimager, photography
They use the following equipment to perform their activities: CCD cameras, scientific filters, technical experience, research, telescope mounts, optical systems, Paramount, Takahashi, SBIG, FLI, Astrophysics, CCD camera,
