Astrophotos, anyone?

[Jon Ruyle]

There haven't been a lot of astro pics on this forum... mine are not very good but I'd like to share a couple, and ask anyone else who has tried astrophotography to post their (probably more successful) attempts.


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Dumbell Nebula


5DII, Takahashi fs102 816mm f/8 iso 400 43min (autoguided)





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Veil Nebula


5DII, 816mm @ f/8 iso 800 28 exposures 8 min each Lumicon OIII filter





The first picture is far more heavily cropped: the veil nebula is a supernova remnant and stretches across multiple degress of sky. The dumbell nebula is a planetary and is only about 8 arcminutes across (still big for a planetary).


Both pictures were taken with a canon 5DII and a little takahashi
fs102 refractor mounted on an astrophysics mach 1 GTO mount. For the dumbell, autogouding was done with an orion short tube 80 (400mm f/5) and an
orion starshoot autoguider. The 28 veil frames were stacked with deep sky stacker.


These pictures are kind of crappy because they were taken from my light polluted back yard, and also because I don't really know what I'm doing. Tips and comments are welcome. Postings of your own astrophotos even more welcome

[Daniel Browning]

Looks great, Jon. Nice shots! I haven't tried anything outside our solar system yet, except at ultra wide angles.

[Jon Ruyle]

Thanks, Daniel.


You can see the stars in the dumbell shot are not perfectly round. I was autoguiding at 400mm, probably should have barlowed it. I'm still a little clumsy at finding guidestars, however, so I find the shorter focal length easier. I wasn't polar alligned very well, don't know how much that matters. Rather than one 43 minute exposure, three 15 minute exposures might have worked better, even when guiding (though it was my first autoguided shot, so I wanted to see what was possible).


And I need to get to a dark site []


Hope to get better results as time goes on.


BTW, why not post some of your solar system shots, Daniel? I'd like to see them.

[wusstigphoto]

okay... I'll bite


Not sure why i want to embarrass myself but here goes...


Several years back, Grandma bought the kids a Meade ETX-125. At the time, my only good camera was a Sony F707 so these were taken with that. Heck, I don't even remember how I took them but I have been meaning to get the Canon set up on this tele to see what it can do... whenever I get around to ordering what I need, I'll try and post similar pics to compare.


Moonscape...





Jupiter...

[Jon Ruyle]

I wouldn't worry about embarrassing yourself... we're not trying to rival Hubble, are we? []


Both the moon and jupiter are bright objects, so maybe you just aimed the camera at the eyepiece and took the picutre. I did a little of that with my canon G2 and 12 1/2" f/5 reflector.


Assuming "the canon" is a dslr, you could try prime focus photography with it, though if I remember correctly, the ETX only has a 1 1/4" focuser so you probably wouldn't be able to illuminate the whole ccd. But who cares?


There is a fair amount of detail visible in your picture of Jupiter. Did you try a little sharpening and turning up the saturation?


The ETX-125 is a nice scope... my kids aren't getting one that nice

[btaylor]

Not quite as close up as some of the others here but this is one I got on Friday night.


Not the greatest in terms of how many stars are in the sky as there was a 3/4 moon. Mostly took this one to try out stacking in CS4.


Setup was: Canon 40D, Canon 10-22mm @ 11mm and f/3.5, Exposure: 10sec, ISO 250


This was a total of 426 (that's not a typo) images stacked together and the foreground image (some light painting with a flashlight) put over the top. Took a VERY long time for CS4 to process by the way. I think there was about 6 hours in post for this one, probably more a function of me learning to use photoshop than anything else.


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[Jorn]

Nice.


Can you post a picture of your equipment?

[Jon Ruyle]

Hi Jorn,


Not sure if you meant me or btaylor, but here are a couple of pics of the 5DII attached to the telescope. The little telescope on top (and the little camera attached to it) is for guiding.


I guess even a small telescope makes a pretty big camera lens.





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[Jorn]

Exactly what I was looking for Thanks!


Is the camera adapter home made or could i be bought?

[Jon Ruyle]

Is the camera adapter home made or could i be bought?

I'm not nearly clever enough to have made the thing I think I got it at astronomics, (www.astronomics.com). I'm sure orion (www.telescope.com) would have it, too. I believe it's called a t-ring but you might want to call to make sure. I also needed a 2" extension tube to reach focus at infinity. (As Bryan might say, it's not going be cofused with a macro lens.)