m51 image

[Jon Ruyle]

Okay, another astro photo. This one was a little longer exposure, taken Saturday night/Sunday morning of the spiral galaxy M51 from my little property in Wonder Valley California:


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5DII with AP130GT (819mm f/6.3) with field flattener on Mach 1 GTO mount, autoguided (with orion short tube 80 + Starshoot autoguider)


I used 20 exposures, 10 minutes each. stacked with deep sky stacker and processed with DPP and Gimp Notice the smaller galaxy in the upper left. There are actually several others (including a very dim one close to the galaxy which I haven't been able to image before).


This picture pales compared to what the serious types are doing these days, but I think it is pretty cool what modern CCD technology makes possible for a goof-off like me who barely knows how to point the scope and press the shutter button []

[Ade]

WOW, mega impressed,


funny, i was watching a program about the universe on sunday and thought i should have a go at that, i thought of hiring a big lens and going to one of the

[Jon Ruyle]

Thanks


If you're interested in astrophotography, you are likely to need a good photographic mount in addition to a telescope or lens (in fact, most astrophotographers feel that the mount is actually more important than the lens/telescope, and it is not unusual for them to spend 2x as much on the mount as on the optics).


You might consider a telescope instead of a camera lens. An 8" SCT with a nice mount costs far less than a canon 800mm f/5.6 L but gathers about 2 times as much light (so exposures take half as long). But then, I'm not sure where one can rent a telescope.


I think it is great that you have dark sky parks in Scotland. We don't really have anything like that in the US. I drove 2 hours each way to my dark site

[Andy Stringer]

anyone fancy a trip to give this a go, could split the cost of hiring a HUGE lens

Sorry Ade, I don't see any HUGE lenses on that link. I would want one of these, plus a rock solid tripod and an autoguider to keep the camera pointed at the right part of the sky for 3 hours. Oh, and a clear sky. When did you last see one of those in Scotland?

Also, we would need to do it before 26th April or after 18th August, otherwise the sky wouldn't be dark enough for long enough due to the astronomical twilight which occurs when the sun is less than 18° below the horizon in southern Scotland.

If you think you can overcome those obstacles, let me know and we can maybe sort something out. Failing that, we could lower our expectations and go for some star trails like those by Tim or Chris in this thread.

Excellent capture, Jon, and thanks for the tips on optics. There might be a cheaper way after all.

[Richard Lane]

Wow John, that

[Jon Ruyle]

Thanks, Rich!

Can you shoot birds with it?

It's manual focus and is no doubt optimized for imaging at infinity, but other than that it should be okay for birds. []

[Ade]

Flip, a bit more involved than i first thought, I think i may downgrade my aspirations to star trails, but they were pretty cool too.......I bet if i tried hard i could get a picture of the moon!


Andy, I

[Mark Elberson]

Beautiful Jon!

[Jon Ruyle]

Thanks, Mark


Ade, for the price of the 1200mm, you could get a really nice telescope for astrophotography, like a big RC.

[Ade]

Sweet, can you hire them?


LOL, I get it guys, taking pictures of far away galaxys is SLIGHTLY more involved than i first thought, but hey, i've been on google images and a chap called Hubble took some nice pics and that must have been about 70 years ago, i guess he used a box brownie or something, how hard can it be........[8-|]