Astrophoto thread (your own photos please)

[Eli13]

Might be but I'm in Tennessee if that helps out then again.... really i don't know but i would have to look.

 

[JEL]

Astronomy Clubs in Tennessee:

http://www.astronomyclubs.com/1/190/44/0/club.aspx

 

[Nazban]

lucky guys, since im living in dubai theres not that many astronomy clubs(only 1 XD)
But I dont get time to even go out and stargaze with them

 

[george7378]

Eli13: You don't need a telescope to take pictures of the sky - try filming the space station when it comes over, or if you have a DSLR camera or even a higher-end compact camera, try taking pictures of constellations, or the Moon with some scenery. Good luck!

Here's my latest offering - some video of Saturn taken through my telescope last night. It's a bit dark (please let me know if it is too dim for you to see properly and I'll try to change it) because, for some reason when I convert from my camera's local .mov format to a movie maker compatible one, it seems to get dimmer. Anyway, here it is:

 

[JEL]

@george7378, any chance you'd make a short video of the star Vega with that telescope? I'm curious to see what that would look like compared to what I can get with my spotting-scope (to see how big a change it would be for me if I went for an upgrade like that)

I can't really track much dimmer objects than Vega with the spotting-scope, because I have to track the object while the camera sits on the scope (I don't have a finder mounted, atleast not yet). So anything dimmer than what the camera-sensor can pick up real-time is impossible to locate (it'll only show up after the long-exposure shot, which obviously isn't any help when tracking)

 

[george7378]

@george7378, any chance you'd make a short video of the star Vega with that telescope? I'm curious to see what that would look like compared to what I can get with my spotting-scope (to see how big a change it would be for me if I went for an upgrade like that)

I can't really track much dimmer objects than Vega with the spotting-scope, because I have to track the object while the camera sits on the scope (I don't have a finder mounted, atleast not yet). So anything dimmer than what the camera-sensor can pick up real-time is impossible to locate (it'll only show up after the long-exposure shot, which obviously isn't any help when tracking)

Hi JEL,

No problem - I'll do it at the next clear night (when Vega is up, of course - it is pretty low down at the moment) and will post it when I'm done. I don't think there will be that much difference with regards to what you can see (obviously all stars appear as points of light no matter what you view them with), but a larger scope will make stars and galaxies look much brighter. Anyway, I'll make a video and post it.

...also, the ISS passed in front of Betelgeuse tonight - I just managed some photos:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/georgekristiansen/5654776563

http://www.flickr.com/photos/georgekristiansen/5654816503

 

[Eli13]

Astronomy Clubs in Tennessee:

http://www.astronomyclubs.com/1/190/44/0/club.aspx

Thanks, but none of them are near me.....

"Eli13: You don't need a telescope to take pictures of the sky - try filming the space station when it comes over, or if you have a DSLR camera or even a higher-end compact camera, try taking pictures of constellations, or the Moon with some scenery. Good luck!"

I wish I even had that. I don't have a nice camera at the moment, well I don't even have a camera. The only camera I do have is my phones camera which is being repaired at the moment (little brother dropped it on the tile and cracked the screen cover :dry oh well, its still funny to see people be amazed that you can tell when the next moon phase is. Thanks for all the feedback though! :tiphat:

 

[JEL]

Hi JEL,

No problem - I'll do it at the next clear night (when Vega is up, of course - it is pretty low down at the moment) and will post it when I'm done. I don't think there will be that much difference with regards to what you can see (obviously all stars appear as points of light no matter what you view them with), but a larger scope will make stars and galaxies look much brighter. Anyway, I'll make a video and post it.

Thank you so much George
(no rush, just whenever you get around to it. I just bought my spotting-scope so even if I do go for an upgrade it won't be anytime soon)

The spotting-scope I'm using (which uses glass-lenses, so basically comparable to a refractor-scope I guess, except it doesn't mirror the image upside down or left-to-right) comes with a zoom eye-piece (20x to 80x zoom), and I get what I can't really describe as other than quite severe chromatic aberration at high zoom-levels. It's even there when zoomed all the way out. I've read that all refractors have that to some degree and that reflectors do not, such as I gather your sky-watcher 250PX is (or is it a combo? a catadioptric? I couldn't really find out, when I looked at my local scope-dealer's website to see the specs of that scope (they don't have that particular model, only other sky-watcher models))

The objective lens diameter of my spotting-scope is 80 mm (3.15 inches), so it's a lot smaller than yours.
The field-of-view angle it produces is 1.5 to 0.7 degrees (according to the manual).

the ISS passed in front of Betelgeuse tonight - I just managed some photos

and you don't use any scope for that, right? It's just the camera doing a long exposure? (and then some good timing to capture the exact moment ofcourse )

 

[Yoda]

New image I took of M51 tonight with a ATIK Titan and 3.3 focal reducer using a LX90.
15x30 seconds, 10 times 20 seconds, 5x60 seconds.

---------- Post added 06-03-11 at 07:53 AM ---------- Previous post was 06-02-11 at 11:02 PM ----------

Damn,

I just noticed the new Supernova in M51 which I imaged last night but some French Astronomer beat me to reporting it so he gets the credit !

Damn the French !! :lol:

 

[JEL]

A wide-angle night-sky shot, showing Polaris and various constellations.

Even though this photo is taken at the darkest time of the night, the sun-light is clearly visible to the north. It seems to contribute more to light-pollution than the city-lights themselves.

I edited the photo in GIMP (increased contrast to make stars stand out a bit more clearly)

 

[RisingFury]

As promised...

Here are 5 globular clusters taken with Telescope (D = 70 cm, f=2.031m, F/D=2.9 resolution=0.914"/px).

They're all gray-scale because we need them for an astronomy project for my uni (mapping the radial distribution of stars).

Seeing was 2.1", but thankfully the Moon was eclipsed, giving us better conditions. The images are stacked using DeepSkyStacker.

We were supposed to shoot M12 as well, but one of our team members screwed up the tx point command - forgot to rotate the telescope, so we ended up with double images of M5 instead.

M3 - 6 x 60 s

M5 - 10 x 30 s

M13 - 5 x 30 s

M92 - 5 x 50 s

NGC 6229 - 4 x 60 s

The telescope:

I also took a pic on my phone. I'll post it on weekend.

 

[RisingFury]

Telescope Vega, in all her glory - well, at least as much as I could take in.
This is taken from within the cupola. The pic is taken in low light because the telescope was already being focused. It's also taken on my phone...


The telescope itself sits on a thin layer of oil to keep it isolated from any vibrations (because of turning of the cupola and the drive motors) and to insure smooth movement when tracking. The telescope needs to be re-focused before each use, because of thermal expansion / contraction and mechanical stresses.

The camera being used is Apogee-Alta U16 and needs to be cooled to around -25°C before use.

 

[george7378]

I haven't posted any photos recently (mainly because of exams) but now that they are over, here are my latest offerings:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/georgekristiansen/

http://gkastro.tk/

 

[Yoda]

Just bought a modified Canon Rebel ( IR filter removed) and here's my first image with it ( 5x 1 minute stacked using a 105 M refractor).

Not too shabby for a test image !

 

[Unstung]

Just captured the ISS; the line is curved because of camera shake. I didn't have enough time to take another shot with the timer on. It's a 15 second exposure.

(Direct link, 1600*1200: http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y208/last2/IMG_0505.jpg)

Guess which one it is.

 

[JEL]

modified Canon Rebel ( IR filter removed)

So the blue-ish/purple-ish halo's around some of the brightest stars is typical refractor-behavior? I had them severely on my spotting-scope (a refractor), that's why I draw that conclusion from your image (which is excellent, no doubt )

Or is it the camera-sensor? Or a combo?

Do you get the same halo's when using reflector telescopes?

And about the IR-filter; That's not something one can remove one-self, is it? What's the simplest way to test if it's on your camera? By pointing a standard tv remote-control at it and taking a photo while pressing the remote-buttons? (That works on my video-cam. Makes the LED light up on the filmed image)

I just recently changed my Sony A33 for a Canon 60D, which was certainly a good move, but I haven't yet tested how it reacts to IR light, or UV for that matter.

 

[JEL]

star trails

I attempted a star-trail image, and came up with this one:

Darker: StarTrail_01_north.jpg

Lighter: StarTrail_02_north.jpg

(They are here as links rather than images, to avoid all the jitter from the image-resizing that happens when loading a forum-page with many images on it)

Both versions are made from the same set of raw files, except the set of raw files were 'developed' differently for each version (the canon does 14 bit in raw, so that leaves a few more options when deciding how to compress it into the 8 bit jpeg)

The seeing conditions are far from ideal at the moment, having no real dark periods even at the darkest time of night. Winter is when to do it around here.

The slightly aurora-looking things are clouds.

The center-star is Polaris.

Anyway, the data for this image are these:

Photo date: 20110629 00:04-00:23 UTC (02:04-02:23 local)
Frames: 36
Dark frames: 1
Exposure time (each single image): 30 sec, ISO-200, f/5, focal length: 10 mm
Camera: Canon EOS 60D
Lens: Tamron SP AF 10-24 mm F/3.5-4.5 Di II, model B001E
Software used: Startrails, Gimp

 

[Messierhunter]

There were not going to be any decent night time passes of ISS or the shuttle during the final mission from my location, so I attempted to capture it this morning instead about 1.25 hours after sunrise. I've never succeeded in directly capturing ISS in broad daylight like this before. You can see the white shape of Atlantis and the black spot of its engine compartment at the top of the image of ISS.

For daytime captures that don't involve transits, computerized tracking with a dual camera setup (one for viewfinder, one for main view) is a must I think.

 

[JEL]

@Messierhunter; fantastic! Any chance you could make a video showing how you operate your equipment while you do these captures? And include a data-list of the used equipment and settings etc?

I'm looking into buying a real telescope after summer, but I'm still too much a noob on this field to really know for sure what to aim for, so videos showing what others use, and how they use it, would be great (that request goes out to anyone else reading this post ofcourse Maybe not posting such videos in this thread but in a separate thread)

But the ability to correlate the capture-results, such as this video you got of ISS, with videos showing how they are captured (a kind of 'behind the scenes' or 'the making of') would be a great help I think. If you don't mind sharing your 'secrets' ofcourse

 

[SandroSalgueiro]

Wow, utterly awesome footage. I've never got to see anything other than a shiny little dot.