quick astrophotos (or: making do with a lens that was cheap in 2002)

I've long been interested in astronomy (looking through telescopes, that is) and photography, but always resisted astrophotography. Too time-consuming, too expensive, and I knew I could never get results that compare with what serious guys get.


But with the 5D II and live view to make focusing easy, I coudln't resist attaching the thing to my little telescope to see what I got.


The sensor is so sensitive, I can see dim stars with live view. A 10 second exposure at iso 12800 is enough to see if the object is where I want it in the field. The results, while falling far short of what "real astrophotographers" get, were better than I expected.


http://picasaweb.google.com/jonruyle/Astro#


Or:





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Orion Nebula 4 min 800mm f/8 ISO 800








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M51 2min 800mm f/8 ISO 1600








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Comet Lulin 1 min 800mm f/8 ISO 1600








The real surprise, though, was not the results, but how much fun it was. I was up three nights in a row, and got up at 4am a couple of days ago to catch comet Lulin.


Keep in mind that these are all short exposures. (In picassa, click "more info" on the right to see the stats ). I used no autoguiding or stacking. My inexpensive em-2 mount and fs102 refractor were both designed for visual use, not photography. I used no fancy image processing (no maximum entropy, no lucy-richardson), no frozen ccds. Worse yet, no skill :). All I had going for me was the 5D II and a little takahashi refractor. I'll bet the serious guys get awesome results with this camera.

<span style="font-size: small;"]<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"]Can youembed maybe one or two samples in your post? Picasa is a restricted website where I work :(<span style="font-size: 9pt; color: black; font-family: Verdana;"]<o:p></o:p>

WAY COOL!


Now I want a telescope!


Money first, then telescope....


Actually, Debt gone first, then telescope....

Okay, Mark- I've added a few images. Pretty draconian of them not to let you see picassa.


Colin: the telescope has been a lot of fun... I had gotten my moneys worth several times over before I ever attached a camera to it. And, obviously, my camera is totally worth it to me even if I never attach it to a telescope. So this is icing.


I also have a 3175mm f/5 reflector (known in the astronomy world as a 25" obsession). But it would cost thousands to get the thing to take a long exposure picture, then probably hundreds of hours of tinkering....


I'm sticking with the small scope for now. :)

That is really cool, Jon. I would like to do more prime focus astrophotography with my 5D2 also. 25" obsession... you've got even worse aperture fever than I do. :)