Meade Instrument Corporation
   
Deep Sky Imager™  
 
Peter O'Brien
 
M81
M81- Image by Peter W. O'Brien with Meade's Deep Sky Imager. Meade 10" LX200 Telescope. [Click to Enlarge]
  Peter O'Brien and the Deep Sky Imager  
Peter W. O'Brien writes of his M81 image taken from Derry, New Hampshire with the Deep Sky Imager and his 10" Meade LX200:

"After my first few successful attempts with the deep sky imager I was spurred on till late night, waiting for the galaxies M81 and M82 to be high in the sky. Being a neophyte to this end of digital imaging and adhering to the philosophy that "if a little is good a lot is better" I set both gain and offset to the maximum. I'm still amazed by the brightness of the central bulge of M81 with a 1sec Auto exp setting, unbelievable in a 30 sec preview. After the software stacked a few dozen frames I was quite happy. Faint knots of extra-galactic nebulas within the spiral arms could be discerned .... (New to me!) . However it wasn't until in post production the next day when I started to fiddle with levels and contrast that I was truly blown away by the wealth of signal detail buried in that image. I admit that I do feel a little sad at the passing of film, but WOW.

In the past few months I have been seeing and doing more deep sky stuff than I can remember. I'm on the learning curve now. Next time I'll be saving fits file format. Today with the DSI and the multitude of digital tools available; stitching, stacking, masking, et al, the sky is the limit or more precisely the limiting factor.

Thank you Meade for giving back the night."

"Ironically, for years I have been designing CCD anti-reflection thin films for some of the worlds' largest terrestrial and space telescopes... And it's your 1/4 mega-pixel device that has excited my interest in their use."

Peter W. O'Brien
Derry, NH

Peter O'Brien has been with the quantum electronics group at MIT Lincoln Laboratory since1995 and has run the MIT Lincoln Laboratory optical thin film laboratory since 1999.

Return back to DSI Gallery

Return back to Deep Sky Imager