kpantz Posted September 9, 2012 Share Posted September 9, 2012 So there was a request in the PHL area banter thread for me to post some of the astrophotography images I've been able to do. I'm no pro by any stretch and am still playing around with equipment and technique. I don't have a tracking telescope, so the best I can do is point a camera at the lens of my Dobsonian and snap planets and the moon. Anything else I can see is too faint to image without a telescope that tracks and allows longer exposures. Those disclaimers aside, here they are: First moon shot I tried. HTC Droid Incredible through my 10" Dobsonian telescope. This was done more recently...a few nights before full moon with my Galaxy S3 through a 14mm eyepiece in my 10" Dobsonian. HTC Droid Incredible through a 9mm eyepiece in my 10" Dobsonian. This photobomb happened while I was trying to adjust focus. 50mm lens on a Canon Rebel XTi. A not quite focused image of Jupiter and the Pleiades open cluster. A short stack of longer exposures of Orion. Note you can see the Orion Nebula in the sword. MUCH more impressive in my telescope, though. Oh - and one more night shot. Found while walking the dog around the back yard last week. Ick. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wederwarrior Posted September 9, 2012 Share Posted September 9, 2012 Great shots! Wednesday morning Venus and the moon will be worth the wake up! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kpantz Posted September 9, 2012 Author Share Posted September 9, 2012 Great shots! Wednesday morning Venus and the moon will be worth the wake up! Thanks! Wondering if I might be able to get both Venus and the moon in a wide FOV on my telescope Wednesday AM. Probably not, but if I can, you can count on a picture of it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aslkahuna Posted September 9, 2012 Share Posted September 9, 2012 Like kpantz, I use relatively simple (and inexpensive) equipment to get fairly decent astrophotos. Attached are some shots I've taken over the years-the telescopic ones were taken with using the afocal method with a Sony DSC-S90 Cybershot point and shoot camera bought years ago (only 4 MP). The last is a shot of the Cygnus Milky Way using a film camera some 21 years ago with the camera piggybacked on my 10" Dob which was used to handguide the 5 minute eposure. A segment shot showing the crater Plato. To the left and a bit above plato is a drak line showing the Alpine Valley, a rift zone. Segment shot through the Dob showing Tycho (the bright rayed crater. To the lower right of the large crater above and right of tycho are four overlapping craters that are the subject of an article in October's S&T. Sunspots on April 20th this year take with a 90mm Maksutov with a full aperature Solar filter A H-Alpha shot of the Sun showing a flare on July 11th taken through my PST Steve Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kpantz Posted September 9, 2012 Author Share Posted September 9, 2012 Impressive! I need to know how you hand guided your Dob. Did you rig it on some sort of EQ mount? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aslkahuna Posted September 9, 2012 Share Posted September 9, 2012 Impressive! I need to know how you hand guided your Dob. Did you rig it on some sort of EQ mount? Nope, I had attached a bracket to the telescope and put the camera on it using a 1/4"-20 bolt and wing nut. Then I sat at the eyepice of the scope and using slow but steady hand pressure kept the guide star (Deneb in this case)centered in the field. One can do this fairly easily for about 5-10 minutes after which field rotation becomes a problem. BTW, for those ho really want to go easy, my son took some pix of the May Solar eclipse and the Venus Transit by holding his IPhone to the eyepiece (Orion even sells an attachment that allows this) with good results. Steve Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kpantz Posted September 9, 2012 Author Share Posted September 9, 2012 Nope, I had attached a bracket to the telescope and put the camera on it using a 1/4"-20 bolt and wing nut. Then I sat at the eyepice of the scope and using slow but steady hand pressure kept the guide star (Deneb in this case)centered in the field. One can do this fairly easily for about 5-10 minutes after which field rotation becomes a problem. BTW, for those ho really want to go easy, my son took some pix of the May Solar eclipse and the Venus Transit by holding his IPhone to the eyepiece (Orion even sells an attachment that allows this) with good results. Steve Nice. Might try that approach. Thanks for the suggestion! Safety note for anyone reading. Don't try ANYTHING with the sun unless you have a solar filter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Voyager Posted September 9, 2012 Share Posted September 9, 2012 Great images guys! The one of Saturn and it's rings though just blew me away! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sock Puppet Posted September 10, 2012 Share Posted September 10, 2012 Very cool. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aslkahuna Posted September 10, 2012 Share Posted September 10, 2012 One hint- it's easiest to handguide with a Dob when the field being photographed is close to the meridian since only azimuth needs to be moved over a 5 minute period-however the zenith has to be avoided. Steve Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quakertown needs snow Posted September 10, 2012 Share Posted September 10, 2012 cool Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Avdave Posted September 14, 2012 Share Posted September 14, 2012 Sweet pics Ken. Those came out pretty damn good for just expirementing around with the equipment lol. The saturn pic is incredible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kpantz Posted September 16, 2012 Author Share Posted September 16, 2012 Sweet pics Ken. Those came out pretty damn good for just expirementing around with the equipment lol. The saturn pic is incredible. Thanks! It's fun to see what I can do. I think my next project is going to be building a barn door tracker. Should allow me to get some longer exposures with the DSLR. I just hope the light pollution isn't too strong. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kpantz Posted September 16, 2012 Author Share Posted September 16, 2012 Two more shot earlier this week. Canon Rebel XTi, 35mm lens. Stacked about 20 exposures for each. Not great, but not terrible. The first time I've ever "seen" the Milky Way. Light Pollution to the south is pretty bad around here, so the fact that I managed to bring this out at all without destroying the image is pretty cool. Cygnus. The first time I shot this on August 2 with a 50mm and about 10 10-second exposures, I thought it was cool. Circled region is the open cluster M29. Then, I reshot it on September 10 with the 35mm and 20 15-second exposures. I think you can see a little more. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kpantz Posted September 16, 2012 Author Share Posted September 16, 2012 Adding an annotated version of the Milky Way shot. Just to show how many deep sky objects can be seen. Of course, none of them are visually interesting in such a wide field, but it's just such a loaded part of the sky it's hard not to call it all out. I know I'm leaving some of them out, but the more famous obvious ones are here. Point of information: The Eagle Nebula is where the famous Hubble "Pillars of Creation" image was captured. Edit: Wow - completely missed M7, the open cluster of stars near the bottom (just to the left of the big tree at the bottom-right of the image). That one came out better than I thought. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kpantz Posted September 17, 2012 Author Share Posted September 17, 2012 Nabbed Andromeda (M31) last night. Used the cheap Canon 75-300mm zoom on the Rebel XTi. Stacked 30 exposures of 3 seconds each. Post processing in Photoshop (done by my photographer wife - I'm pretty much useless in PS). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NaoPos Posted September 18, 2012 Share Posted September 18, 2012 Great shots brother! Pretty awesome you can get them kind around Philly. 1st time I actually saw the "milky way" I was up in toga county at a state park camping. Quite possibly the most beautiful sky I've seen. Perfect conditions for 1 nights... Just watching the band rotate throughout the night was simply amazing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aslkahuna Posted September 19, 2012 Share Posted September 19, 2012 Kpantz had a shot of Saturn-here's one I took of Jupiter in 2010-it's just a single frame not stacked. Steve Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kpantz Posted September 20, 2012 Author Share Posted September 20, 2012 Nice! Jupiter is my next target. I just need it to be out before 10 PM. I'm really just waiting for opposition in early December. Here's a shot I put together from an imaging session this evening in the backyard. Andromeda/M31. The wife will do a better job in post, and I'll undoubtedly post it here, but I was happy enough with what I could do to post it now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wederwarrior Posted September 20, 2012 Share Posted September 20, 2012 Great Shots! Keep em coming! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kpantz Posted September 20, 2012 Author Share Posted September 20, 2012 So here's the wife's edit. I let her take some artistic license with the surrounding stars. After all, I do see diffraction spikes like this in my Dobsonian, so it's not totally unrealistic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Midlo Snow Maker Posted September 20, 2012 Share Posted September 20, 2012 Killer pics guys Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
patrick05 Posted September 21, 2012 Share Posted September 21, 2012 wow those are really amazing pics!! what mount are you using for that canon @kpantz?? light pollution is just unbearable around here... can't even take a shot of Orion's belt even with very long exposure!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kpantz Posted September 21, 2012 Author Share Posted September 21, 2012 wow those are really amazing pics!! what mount are you using for that canon @kpantz?? light pollution is just unbearable around here... can't even take a shot of Orion's belt even with very long exposure!! Wow - I thought my LP was bad. The other night, while imaging Andromeda, I think I might have been able to just barely make out a tiny fuzzball with the naked eye. Might have been my imagination, though. My best skies are overhead and to the north, which kinda sucks, because, relatively speaking, most of the good stuff is to the south. As far as a mount is concerned, it's just a tripod. Nothing more. I'm slowly working towards building a motorized barndoor mount, but not there yet. In the case of the latest Andromeda image above, I took a little over 100 individual 7sec exposures and stacked them. I really want to finish the barndoor mount before Orion gets high in the sky. Can't imagine how cool it would be to get a 50mm shot with the Orion, Horsehead and Flame Nebulae. I know I can get the Orion Nebula to show, but the other two take some more coaxing to show themselves. My biggest gripe is that I've got a shopping mall directly to my south, which, as you can see, absolutely smothers any chance I've got to image the Milky Way near Sagittarius with any decent output. Sucks. The wife and I will get ourselves out to Cherry Springs State Park up in north central PA once our puppy gets a little older and we're willing to let him stay with the neighbors for a weekend. He's just too crazy to inflict on them right now! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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