Astrophoto thread (your own photos please)

[Anroalh12]

Photo of the Horsehead and Flame nebula.

Manually guided for charity as part of the "Light Bucket Challenge" this past weekend.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-R6PnLQQsc

Is that photo real?, becuase if it is real the telescope must be amazing.

 

[kuddel]

Combining the red channel of my image with the Palomar Sky Survey 1 and 2 plates allowed me to also create a gif animation of its motion with each images spaced 30 years apart:
[...]
It's the star right in the center. It appears to suddenly get brighter in my image because mine was really a red+infrared light view and this star is a very dim red dwarf (with a close brown dwarf companion) which is brighter in infrared.

Great image!
I see at least two bright dots (stars?) in your animation. Do you know what's the other one?

 

[Messierhunter]

Is that photo real?, becuase if it is real the telescope must be amazing.

Thanks! It's not the best in the world, but I know how to get the most out of it. It gets the job done pretty nicely. The tracking on that shot could have been a little better but it was my first time manually guiding a picture, no easy task.

---------- Post added at 11:12 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:10 AM ----------

Great image!
I see at least two bright dots (stars?) in your animation. Do you know what's the other one?

2MASS J07200708-0845589. It's another red dwarf star, about 32 light years away. Otherwise unrelated to Scholz's though. It's actually referred to in one of the papers on Scholz's star.
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1410.6792.pdf
There are a number of stars in the shot that actually show detectable proper motion. 60 years provides a long enough baseline to easily see it in stars that are within a few dozen light years.

 

[RisingFury]

Great image!
I see at least two bright dots (stars?) in your animation. Do you know what's the other one?

I spotted some more moving:

Excellent animation

 

[Poscik]

Station taken 2015-02-17, at 19:34 local time (18:34 UTC). A little bit shaken, or out of focus.

 

[Messierhunter]

Ironically I also just got a shot of the station on Sunday morning.

 

[Unstung]

I finally edited my photos of the lunar eclipse. It was surprisingly easy to remove the noise from the long exposures and enhance the stars.

That being said, to see more stars, the photos need to be enlarged. Unfortunately I live in a very light polluted area so there aren't that many.

Both photos are licensed under CC BY-NC 3.0, so feel free to use them anywhere.

 

[Messierhunter]

Those are really excellent eclipse photos Unstung!

Here's my shot of the nova in Sagittarius this morning.
5x1 minute exposures, quick and dirty just before sunrise.

 

[Kyle]

I have that nova pinned down in my star chart, just wish the weather would clear. What would you guesstimate the apparent magnitude as? 5.0?

 

[Messierhunter]

I have that nova pinned down in my star chart, just wish the weather would clear. What would you guesstimate the apparent magnitude as? 5.0?

I would say 4.5~5 maybe, it was detectable by eye when I observed it again on Saturday morning. From my usual observing site anything dimmer than that, that close to the south eastern horizon would have been below the sky glow.

 

[Matias Saibene]

Today a nice night to watch the sky.

My first good picture of the planet Venus.

Currently is at pleasant 24°C, when at this time (autumn) should do 16°C.
Thanks climate change!

 

[Kyle]

Here's a mosaic I took of the Moon.

 

[Prowler901]

That's a beautiful shot, Kyle.

 

[Ouacaze]

Nice shots everyone

Like some here, I'm also interested in shooting the ISS with my small camera .
Once, I was at the countryside with some friends. I showed the station flying by just above the horizon to some of them.
And...amazingly, the next pass happened to be almost 90° over our heads:

I think it's the closest I've ever been to the station (red point)

BTW, Messierhunter & Poscik, what kind/category of telescope are you using to get these kinds of shots ?

 

[Poscik]

Hello First good pass of ISS this evening. It was 22:26 local time, about 490km away. Next pass 0:02, pure zenith, so she will be about 100km closer

 

[boogabooga]

Enjoy the sunshine marathon!

 

[kuddel]

Thanks for the hint, boogabooga!

 

[Messierhunter]

Not exactly astrophotography, but I shot this video of the Falcon 9 explosion with my telescope:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcTxWVSf8_0

 

[Messierhunter]

8 frame stacked image of the Hubble Space Telescope last night:

The optical tube assembly is resolved as a line-like shape using an 8" Meade LX200 Schmidt-Cassegrain and modified Samsung SDC-435 @ f/20 (2x barlow). Exposure was 1/500 second. Tracking was performed using Brent Boshart's Satellite Tracker software along with an Atik Titan-C on an Orion ST-80 for a "viewfinder camera" to acquire the satellite. Range was a little less than 600 km at the time the frames were collected. The image shows true orientation from an altitude-azimuth perspective and agrees with a simulation of Hubble using Orbiter, the Telescope MFD mod, and the Hubble EX mod (along with current orbital elements for Hubble taken from the TLE closest to the observation time). In the simulation below I specified the pointing position that corresponds to GD153, a white dwarf star which was next up for imaging less than 10 minutes after this shot was taken (the telescope was recording bias calibration frames at the time of imaging - imaging time was 1:35 UT on August 10th).
http://www.stsci.edu/ftp/observing/weekly_timeline/timeline_08_10_15
Here's the simulated view from Orbiter from my observing location looking at Hubble in orbit at that time:

Note that the solar arrays are edge-on as they are actively tracking the sun in the simulation and this is probably also why they are not visible in my image of the telescope. Overlaying these two images shows excellent agreement in the approximate observed and expected orientation of Hubble:

 

[Messierhunter]

First piece of a timelapse of asteroid/dead comet 2015 TB145 as it flew by earth on halloween. Much more to come.
http://h.dropcanvas.com/1xynl/2015TB145first24.gif
Tracked with an 8" LX200 Classic and custom software for minor planet tracking with mounts that lack built-in minor planet tracking or drive rate setting (I plan to make it ASCOM compatible and then release it). It also has a feature to smoothly control the motion of the telescope with a joystick for tracking fast moving objects (such as rocket launches, as an example). It's similar to optic tracker (though without video tracking capabilities just yet), but with ASCOM it will have much wider telescope compatibility (including older classic LX200s like mine).