Astrophotography

Topher925

Well I got my a new (to me) scope last week and first lighted it last night. I was floored with the higher quality optics. The moon was amazing and in stunning detail. Stars are sharper, colors better, and practically no false color visually.

Pictures come out a lot nicer too. I shot M101 again (among others) to see how it compared to my last scope.

chemisttree

Using more reference stars only helps with the GOTO functionality of the mount. The tracking accuracy is solely due to polar alignment and cannot be corrected with any alignment methodology except perhaps the polar alignment function on the CG5-ASGT mount. You can autoguide with the CG5-ASGT via the 'Guide' port if you want to use longer exposures or do a very precise drift alignment.

Nice pic of M101 using the new scope. Is it an apo or a reflector?

Topher925

Whoops, what I meant to say was using an ALL-star alignment, not four star. Although lately I've found the polar scope does a better job with polar alignment than the all-star alignment. I've been thinking about guiding but probably won't do that for a while as I'm still progressing up the learning curve.

The scope is an Orion ED80, so its one of those fake APO's. I've got a focal reducer on the way for it. Here's a shot I took of M31 last week with an Astro Tech AT72ED w/FF:



I think I went a little heavy on the high pass filter. I've been learning photoshop CS6 with this image data.

davenn

This week the population of the far north Queensland city of Cairns, NE Australia, had a boost of some 60,000 or so in its numbers. People from all over Australia and from worldwide converged on the region to catch a glimpse of the 2 minutes of totality that was on offer.
My wife and I did a 3 hour flight from Sydney, Australia, others did 10 hrs in a plane from Perht city on the Australian west coast. This was still nothing compared to those that travelled from the far corners of the earth. From our beach site we were surrounded by people from as close as 5 minutes down the road to those from England, France, Denmark and many other places



it was not looking good at sunrise, with only a thin gap of sky between the horizon and the base of some thick clouds that extended up to ~25 deg elevtion



~10 minutes before totality, the bulk of the cloud finally moved off and we were treated to sun looking decidely smaller




Dave

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davenn

Totality was heralded by the Diamond ring effect and the solar filters came off the scopes and cameras




Totality was spectactular and from our location we had 2mins and 2 sec of "lights out"



and before you knew it it was all over and the moon was moving off the sun




Pentax, K5 DSLR; 500mm telephoto witha 2 x teleconverter (1000mm total f/l) f12.6,
iso 3200, exp 125th sec for diamond ring and totality.
ISO 400 and exp 80th sec for solar filtered pics before and after totality

Now if if I manage to aviod "kicking the bucket" in the 16 years, there is another total eclipse that passes right over home in Sydney (Australia) ~2028 - 2029

cheers
Dave

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Drakkith

Very nice Dave!

davenn

thanks mate :)

that was my 3rd total eclipse and my second one in Australia

my first total eclipse was 30 something yrs ago back in New Zealand

cheers
Dave

Drakkith

I have yet to see a total solar eclipse, and only saw my first partial this past summer right at sundown.

Borek

We have seen the total eclipse of 1999 over the lake Balaton in Hungary (I planned the vacation in such a way we got there on our way back home from the Croatia/Venice). From what I remember no next total eclipse in my lifetime in Europe.

spark802

Hi here is my rendition of Orion, Jupiter, and part of Taurus imaged Sept 23/2012 from approx 49n 97w. 0900UTC. I used a Canon P and S G-12 with CHDK hacked onto flashcard. I was able to bump my ISO up to 10,000 and had my lens at 6mm. f4.0, approx 35 secs.
(there is also a link to view it in larger format)




http://www.flickr.com/photos/49843779@N08/8301509367/

Drakkith

Nice Spark!

spark802

thanks drak!

Drakkith

NGC 3372, The Carina Nebula.
Shot in narrowband. Red-Sulfur II, Green-Hydrogen Alpha, Blue-Oxygen III

9x300s - HA
10x300s - OIII
14x300s - SII

Edit: Didn't realize it would be so big in the post. Forgive me as I have no idea how to make a small thumbnail and the file is too large to upload. (Had to shrink it down 50% just to upload it to imageshack)

spark802

Nice image Drak!...... Rich color, lots of detail.

Dave

russ_watters

That's pretty awesome.

davenn

I second that !!

well done drakkith !

Dave

Borek

Wow.