Astrophoto thread (your own photos please)

[Messierhunter]

The field of view was roughly equivalent to 200x magnification with a plossl eyepiece.

 

[george7378]

Here are some images my Dad took with his compact camera, and I edited. All are 15-second exposures.

Ursa Major:

Lyra:

 

[RisingFury]

I think the colors are a bit über-saturated...

By the way, if you want to determine the color of a star with non-astronomical digital cam, use bad focus so that the star's image gets smudged over more pixels.


CCDs are sensitive to a wide range of photon energies, from UV to near IR. Once a photon hits the CCD it liberates an electron. The electron is counted, so you know a photon hit the CCD, but you don't know it's color.

The way to get color information is by putting a filter in front of the CCD. In astronomy, usually you put one filter in front of the entire CCD, so only a narrow band of photons gets through - red color photons, for example. Since your object in the sky isn't really moving fast, you can afford to take several images through different filters and then assemble them...

But in day to day photography, your object does move. It's impractical to take several shots of your object. To solve that problem, the day to day CCD cams have a mesh of different color filters in front of their CCD. One pixel will thus register only red, one only blue,...

Because a star is very small and may only cover a few pixels, you may only get a few pixel's worth of color data. If you smudge the image over a wider area, you'll cover more pixels and get more color data that will construct a better real-color image.

 

[george7378]

The Moon prevented any long-exposure photography yesterday, so I took a picture of it instead. I'm quite pleased with this as it shows some of the more subtle details such as the rays of Tycho and the smaller seas:

1/125 second exposure at 8X zoom:

 

[Unstung]

The Moon prevented any long-exposure photography yesterday, so I took a picture of it instead. I'm quite pleased with this as it shows some of the more subtle details such as the rays of Tycho and the smaller seas:

1/125 second exposure at 8X zoom:

I took one like that a while ago through a pair of binoculars; I'm sure I already posted it in that thread. Yours came out much cleaner.
I couldn't do it before it got too dark, right after sunset. The moon would be far too overexposed, or maybe that was just my previous [cheap] camera which only had automatic settings, or the binoculars...

 

[george7378]

Your picture came out well too - you got some nice detail, which was more than I could do with my old camera. I also kept over-exposing on anything down to about 1/4 of a second, so I set it to the lowest option, and it worked. I think you can also use editing programs to change light levels.

---------- Post added at 11:47 ---------- Previous post was at 11:29 ----------

Also, the Perseid meteor shower is peaking soon on the 13th August in the early hours of the morning. I have already noticed an increase in the number of meteors lately, so they will make a good photo opportunity, with over 150 meteors per hour under dark skies.

 

[george7378]

Hi again,

I got a fantastic sunset panorama and images of the red sky (plus one of Venus) this evening:

 

[silent_protagonist]

My most recent attempt, this time with a setup that's mildly more sophisticated than trying to hold a camera to the eyepiece, which I've never managed to make work.

Scope: Meade 4500 4.5" f/8 newtonian
Camera: HP Webcam 2100 with lens removed and modified to fit 1.25" adapter.

These were taken on Aug. 7 at about 06:00 GMT. The first is simply a raw frame. The second is about 900 frames of video stacked using Registax (amazing bit of kit, that).

I'm really pleased with the results. I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to get anything with my cheap scope (the mount doesn't even have a clock drive), I'm really impressed with Registax's ability to turn my shaky, all-over-the-place video into something recognizable.

 

[george7378]

Here's a satellite flare I caught last night - I don't know if it was an Iridium because it was travelling west to east, and seemed to be going too fast.

 

[SpaceMan965]

If anyone is interested in a space picture community I upload my pictures here http://todaysspacepictures.com/ also does anyone know what mm lens you need to see mars?

 

[george7378]

I got some frames of Jupiter last night - they show the missing SEB, and some of them show the southern equatorial zone too:

 

[george7378]

Here's the pairing of the Moon and Jupiter of tonight:

 

[george7378]

Here are some more frames of Jupiter from tonight (a little cloudy and seeing was not so great):

 

[silent_protagonist]

Clear skies and good phase finally let me try my hand at the moon. I also started playing around with the wavelet filter in RegiStax, and got some really good results.

The first two are the eastern half of Mare Imbrium, with ant without wavelet filter, and the last one is Tycho and Clavius craters in the southern highlands. In the second image, if you zoom in close, you can just make out Hadley Rille as a line of slightly darker pixels.

 

[george7378]

Here are the photos I took tonight - the region around Cygnus, Cassiopeia (the Andromeda Galaxy is visible as a small smudge), the Pleiades above the trees, and Ursa Major above the hedge. I also got some nice frames of the space station through my telescope.

---------- Post added at 17:37 ---------- Previous post was at 00:00 ----------

...And here's a video of the pass through my scope:

 

[Turbo]

Wow

"...And here's a video of the pass through my scope:"


Now that, is cool :thumbup:

 

[Yoda]

And here's the ISS through my scope from a few months ago

And a Image of M27 through my guidescope from tonight.

 

[george7378]

Here are some stacked frames of Ganymede eclipsing Jupiter last night:

---------- Post added at 15:52 ---------- Previous post was at 11:48 ----------

I managed to get some nice details by processing further:

 

[Izack]

Wow. Every time I visit this thread I kick myself for not getting a new equatorial mount for my telescope...

 

[george7378]

I have re-worked and re-stacked my afocal ganymede video, this time converting directly from Quicktime to uncompressed AVI. There are some more nice surface details around the disk, including a better GRS and some nice festoons and bands, plus the two moons are visible: