Expert Astrophotography Tips & Discussions | Share Your Photos!

[twinsen]

Thats a superb shot considering the equipment. To image the planets though you really need a very large image scale. This means a smaller fov which is more easily obtained with cameras with smaller sensors like webcams. DSlr are more suited to widefield images. Also with a webcam you can employ a technique called 'lucky imaging' where you take lots of frames of the planet. Because the atmosphere distorts the image you can pick the best frames with the highest resolution and then stack them in procesing software. This way you can get to see actual details on the planets :)

Alex

 

[NOBARTHOLEM]

do you know where i can find a picture of the deep space image, or whatever its called. I want to analyze it. You know the one by the Hubble space telescope. i couldn't find it on the NASA site or on google, if you can help me out i'll be looking.

 

[turbo]

do you know where i can find a picture of the deep space image, or whatever its called. I want to analyze it. You know the one by the Hubble space telescope. i couldn't find it on the NASA site or on google, if you can help me out i'll be looking.

Are you talking about the UDF? If so, here is a link.

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2004/07/image/a/

 

[sanphy]

i want to make an astronomical telescope, can anybody help, give any specifications

 

[bobmerhebi]

Hello guys.

I would just like to share with you my images & webstie.

Direct link to my images: http://picasaweb.google.com/BOBMerhebi

Website: www.astrobob.tk[/URL]

I will be glad to read you comments or suggestions.

Thank you,
BOB

 

[PalashD]

I just saw all the 16 pages full of these awesome pics and I am going to do it again !
They are just great!

I hope I can get a good camera some day and take such great pics!

 

[3dfan]

astrophotography is my hobby, i like to collect photos of space objects and thaks for useful links, I am kinda newbie at it

 

[quddusaliquddus]

Hi all :D. I wanted to know - is it very expensive to take photos of planets in general? What would be the minimum cost (approx) required for a noob?

 

[Telmerk]

Hi all,

Does anybody knows how to attach a CANON EOS 1000D onto a MEADE APO 152/1370 telescope? The telescope has a 2'' focuser drawtube. Many thanks, TtM

 

[bobmerhebi]

Hi all :D. I wanted to know - is it very expensive to take photos of planets in general? What would be the minimum cost (approx) required for a noob?

Hey there,

No its NOT necessarily. I have been an amateur astrophotographer for about more than a year now. I got my first digi cam; a Canon G9, although its expensive but you can find other than this that you can use. My first astrophoto was using my Canon EOS 750QD which is around 10 years old & still new with me. I took photos of the Partial Solar Eclipse back in 2006 & then got the digi files from the studio & processed them on my pc.

You can aslo purchase a fully mechanical cam (that doesn't use a battery for the bulb setting, of course if you know how to use such cams althoug I don't recommend a beginner to start with those) for a very cheap price.

make sure to check out my work on my flickr account: www.astrobobalbum.tk[/url] & my website: [PLAIN]www.astrobob.tk

if you need any help, please don't hesitate to ask me. :)

hope I answered you

 

[bobmerhebi]

Hi all,

Does anybody knows how to attach a CANON EOS 1000D onto a MEADE APO 152/1370 telescope? The telescope has a 2'' focuser drawtube. Many thanks, TtM

How to ? Easy. You just need to search for a cam-telescope adapter. its called by some a telescope adapter & others call it a cam adapter.

you get either a kit or the parts individually. I personally recommend the kit. It consists or the adpater + a T-ring that fits you cam from one end & the telescope from another. You can get the T-ring of your choice when ordering. As you will need different T-Rings for Different Eyepiece sized (i.e.; 1.25" or a 2").

I hope i also answered you

you can stay updated on my website that I included in the previous post, as I will sometime soon add my equipment pictures to it.

Cheers :)

 

[russ_watters]

Hi all :D. I wanted to know - is it very expensive to take photos of planets in general? What would be the minimum cost (approx) required for a noob?

People (like me) start out in astrophotography with a decent webcam and telescope. For a few hundred dollars, you can take pretty good pictures of the moon and planets.

 

[russ_watters]

We had some rare good weather last week and I captured my first good deep space photo in a while. This is an edge-on spiral galaxy. It is about 5 hours total exposure.

 

[baywax]

We had some rare good weather last week and I captured my first good deep space photo in a while. This is an edge-on spiral galaxy. It is about 5 hours total exposure.

Incredible job Russ. Hot diggity dog man... that is deluxe!

How did you avoid light pollution?

If you want dead black skies... try up in south central BC, Canada.

 

[russ_watters]

Thanks.

I don't avoid light pollution, it is a real problem for me. The exposure details are in the pic, but the Luminance channel is only 4 minutes per subframe, which is all I can typically do with my camera and skies (and tracking on my mount...) without washing out the image (actually, the weather was so good, I probably could have done longer this time). Signal to noise ratio is then built by combining multiple exposures instead of taking one longer one.

And though it is a problem, it isn't quite as big a problem as you might think: light pollution adds a flat light to the entire frame, including where the galaxy is, so it brightens the galaxy as well. As a result, you can subtract out the light pollution with software and be left with what the image would have looked like without it. In theory, anyway...

 

[Telmerk]

How to ? Easy. You just need to search for a cam-telescope adapter. its called by some a telescope adapter & others call it a cam adapter.

I hope i also answered you
Cheers :)

Many thanks, Bob, I need to know if a simple so-called T2 adapter solves the problem or not. Hopefully yes, today I going to have a look at the telescope.
Clear Skies, TtM

 

[Sorry!]

We had some rare good weather last week and I captured my first good deep space photo in a while. This is an edge-on spiral galaxy. It is about 5 hours total exposure.

holy crap that is amazing... wish i could take photos like this. or even see with my own eyes stuff like this

 

[russ_watters]

Many thanks, Bob, I need to know if a simple so-called T2 adapter solves the problem or not. Hopefully yes, today I going to have a look at the telescope.
Clear Skies, TtM

It really is that simple. Orion has them: http://www.telescope.com/control/pr...es/~pcategory=astro-imaging/~product_id=A0317

You'll want to double-check what connections the back of your telescope came with, though. It is fairly typical for them to come with that threaded female connection as a component of the focuser, but if not, you'll need this too: http://www.telescope.com/control/pr...es/~pcategory=astro-imaging/~product_id=05270

 

[russ_watters]

holy crap that is amazing... wish i could take photos like this. or even see with my own eyes stuff like this

Thanks - you can't see stuff like that with your eyes, though, you can only take pictures of them, which is why I spend much more time having a camera look through my telescope than using my eyes. I said 5 hours exposure, but I guess since I did the colors separately and stacked multiple exposures, it is really the equivalent of about 1 hour. But that still makes it many thousands of times more light captured (brighter) than what you can see with your eyes.

 

[baywax]

But that still makes it many thousands of times more light captured (brighter) than what you can see with your eyes.

How old is the light from that disc galaxy?

 

[russ_watters]

49 million years.

 

[Sorry!]

Thanks - you can't see stuff like that with your eyes, though, you can only take pictures of them, which is why I spend much more time having a camera look through my telescope than using my eyes. I said 5 hours exposure, but I guess since I did the colors separately and stacked multiple exposures, it is really the equivalent of about 1 hour. But that still makes it many thousands of times more light captured (brighter) than what you can see with your eyes.

ohhh i missed the exposure time. Still that is quite amazing. I'm wondering as I've never had a telescope before how do you keep the galaxy in the frame? since it would be moving relative to where your telescope was originally positioned... i assume some sort of equipment follows it for you?

 

[russ_watters]

I'm wondering as I've never had a telescope before how do you keep the galaxy in the frame? since it would be moving relative to where your telescope was originally positioned... i assume some sort of equipment follows it for you?

The telescope is motorized and aligned to the Earth's rotation axis, so theoretically should be able to passively follow an object across the sky. Realistically, the tracking accuracy required is impossible to do passively, so I have a second telescope and camera mounted on the first and my laptop sends constant tracking corrections to keep the object centered.

 

[baywax]

The telescope is motorized and aligned to the Earth's rotation axis, so theoretically should be able to passively follow an object across the sky. Realistically, the tracking accuracy required is impossible to do passively, so I have a second telescope and camera mounted on the first and my laptop sends constant tracking corrections to keep the object centered.

Most cool!

49 million year old light. Is it a kind of crusty light?!

So this one is not to far out from our own. Did you give us the name yet? Just wondered.. I may have read the post after a Friday night

edit: Does it mean that 49 million years ago, if there were telescopes and people around, no one would be able to see that galaxy... because the light had not reached us yet?

 

[russ_watters]

So this one is not to far out from our own.

No, not really - and it is one of the dimmer/further one's I've captured. 60MLY is the furthest I've captured. But there are a lot of galaxies within that distance!

Did you give us the name yet? Just wondered.. I may have read the post after a Friday night

No name that I'm aware of, just that 4 number catalog designation in the file name: NGC4565.

edit: Does it mean that 49 million years ago, if there were telescopes and people around, no one would be able to see that galaxy... because the light had not reached us yet?

No, the galaxy itself is billions of years older than that, so if we had looked at it 49 million years ago, we'd just see it slightly older than it is now.

 

[Sorry!]

The telescope is motorized and aligned to the Earth's rotation axis, so theoretically should be able to passively follow an object across the sky. Realistically, the tracking accuracy required is impossible to do passively, so I have a second telescope and camera mounted on the first and my laptop sends constant tracking corrections to keep the object centered.

That is so awesome. I shall add that to my list of things I want to buy at some point in my life. :D

 

[thomasxc]

these are taken with a nikon d40 (6.1 MP) and a 70-300 manual focus telephoto lens. as for the one with the stars, i could see none of those with the naked eye. that one was a 30 second exposure.

 

[thomasxc]

during this time of year, its hard for me to get much. (i am in north central florida..)i have no problem with light pollution. it's just that my elevation is almost nothing, like 300 feet.

 

[turbo]

Has anybody here gotten high-quality images of NGC 101? The ones taken by the UK Schmidt camera might be nice, but when they were digitized, the fine details got lost in pixelation. I'm not employed in astrophysics, but this system is of concern to me and my collaborators as we develop our 2nd paper on interacting galaxies.

 

[russ_watters]

Here's my best Jupiter yet. Unfortunately, I screwed up with my filters and only shot red and green (the filters are in a wheel and not labeled by color), but fortunately, Jupiter is mostly red, so it still looks reasonably good. The moons are Europa and Io

 

[baywax]

Here's my best Jupiter yet. Unfortunately, I screwed up with my filters and only shot red and green (the filters are in a wheel and not labeled by color), but fortunately, Jupiter is mostly red, so it still looks reasonably good. The moons are Europa and Io

Thomas and Russ... far out! Thank you.

I was about to buy a telescope as a BDay present for a 13 year old but was told I'd only be getting a similar power to binocs at the under 300 buck range (Canada). Do you guys know of one that is superior in quality and price? Thanks!

 

[thomasxc]

thanks. sweet, russ. yeah. I am looking at at nice celestron, but dang! almost four hundred. I am not real familiar with brands and/or different types, baywax...I'm a (seventeen year old) noob.

 

[mheslep]

Here's my best Jupiter yet. Unfortunately, I screwed up with my filters and only shot red and green (the filters are in a wheel and not labeled by color), but fortunately, Jupiter is mostly red, so it still looks reasonably good. The moons are Europa and Io

Nice. Can the effects of the recent impact of the Earth size object still be seen on the surface?

 

[Sorry!]

Nice. Can the effects of the recent impact of the Earth size object still be seen on the surface?

I don't think that the object that recently hit Jupiter was Earth sized. I believe the 'plum' it created was Earth sized. I may be wrong however.

 

[baywax]

I don't think that the object that recently hit Jupiter was Earth sized. I believe the 'plum' it created was Earth sized. I may be wrong however.

You're right, the plume and debris field is Earth size. Its in Jupiter's southern hemisphere and appears as a black dot. Actually it must have grown in size by now.

Thanks Thomas! Go ahead, be 17 all you want!