- #1
DennisN
Gold Member
2023 Award
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Hi all!
I took a couple of pictures of the Moon at night on 16 May (with an Olympus VR-340 compact digital camera, 10x optical zoom, 4x digital zoom). I used a very small tripod mounted on a microphone stand , and I decided to try out the camera on a star just for fun. First I tried on a reasonably bright star, but I did not manage to zoom in on it, since I had a terrible mount and only the camera screen as a finder.
I then decided to try on another star, and I had better luck zooming in on it. To my surprise it became larger than I expected, and at first I thought it was some kind of optical bug. I then took a couple of pictures of the object, and then I thought that maybe I had captured a planet...
Here are a couple of photos of the object (5 originals and 5 adjusted with autolevels):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/88116576@N05/14180605886/sizes/l
I'm a complete novice at these things, and I am terrible at locating objects in the sky, so I checked with this online virtual telecope: http://www.fourmilab.ch/yoursky/#Telescope
My location was
Location: Malmö, South Sweden
Coordinates: 55° N, 13° E
Observation direction: Southwest
Date/Time: 16 May 2014, 01:48 AM (CET, UTC+01:00)
Photo of observation location, directed at the object, looking southwest:
I entered my location info into the virtual telescope above, which yielded this view:
(here's the page with my info entered into virtual telescope)
According to the virtual telescope, Saturn was approximately located in this direction. I am however not experienced enough to know if it is Saturn or not, so, what do you experienced fellows think, could the object in my photos above be Saturn?
Side note 1: By the way, http://www.flickr.com/photos/88116576@N05/14017077819/sizes/l I took on that night
(as a filter I used two sunglasses mounted in front of the camera lens).
Side note 2: I will buy a telescope pretty soon, but I haven't yet decided which one. I've also read the entire telescope thread here on the forum, and thanks to all contributors!
I took a couple of pictures of the Moon at night on 16 May (with an Olympus VR-340 compact digital camera, 10x optical zoom, 4x digital zoom). I used a very small tripod mounted on a microphone stand , and I decided to try out the camera on a star just for fun. First I tried on a reasonably bright star, but I did not manage to zoom in on it, since I had a terrible mount and only the camera screen as a finder.
I then decided to try on another star, and I had better luck zooming in on it. To my surprise it became larger than I expected, and at first I thought it was some kind of optical bug. I then took a couple of pictures of the object, and then I thought that maybe I had captured a planet...
Here are a couple of photos of the object (5 originals and 5 adjusted with autolevels):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/88116576@N05/14180605886/sizes/l
I'm a complete novice at these things, and I am terrible at locating objects in the sky, so I checked with this online virtual telecope: http://www.fourmilab.ch/yoursky/#Telescope
My location was
Location: Malmö, South Sweden
Coordinates: 55° N, 13° E
Observation direction: Southwest
Date/Time: 16 May 2014, 01:48 AM (CET, UTC+01:00)
Photo of observation location, directed at the object, looking southwest:
I entered my location info into the virtual telescope above, which yielded this view:
(here's the page with my info entered into virtual telescope)
According to the virtual telescope, Saturn was approximately located in this direction. I am however not experienced enough to know if it is Saturn or not, so, what do you experienced fellows think, could the object in my photos above be Saturn?
Side note 1: By the way, http://www.flickr.com/photos/88116576@N05/14017077819/sizes/l I took on that night
(as a filter I used two sunglasses mounted in front of the camera lens).
Side note 2: I will buy a telescope pretty soon, but I haven't yet decided which one. I've also read the entire telescope thread here on the forum, and thanks to all contributors!
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