Stargazing Expert Astrophotography Tips & Discussions | Share Your Photos!

[russ_watters]

That's pretty awesome.

 

[davenn]

That's pretty awesome.

I second that !

well done drakkith !

Dave

 

[Borek]

Wow.

 

[Drakkith]

Thanks guys! BTW this nebula is home to Eta Carinae, an extremely luminous blue supergiant, with a mass of at least 100 solar masses and shining with at least 1 million times more luminosity than the Sun.
It is only one of a handful of stars of this size known to exist in the Milky Way. A little history of the star:

When Eta Carinae was first catalogued in 1677 by Edmond Halley, it was of the 4th magnitude, but by 1730, observers noticed it had brightened considerably and was, at that point, one of the brightest stars in Carina. In the middle of the 18th century, Nicolas Louis de Lacaille mapped and gave the stars of Argo Navis Bayer designations. He assigned the then second-magnitude star the Greek letter Eta.[9]

Subsequently Eta Carinae dimmed, and by 1782 it appeared to have reverted to its former magnitude. In 1820, it was observed to be growing in brightness again. By 1827, it had brightened more than tenfold and reached its greatest apparent brightness in April 1843. With a magnitude of −0.8, it was the second brightest star in the night-time sky (after Sirius at 8.6 light years away), despite its enormous distance. (To put the relationship in perspective, the relative brightness would be like comparing a candle (representing Sirius) at 14.5 meters (48 feet) to another light source (Eta Carinae) about 10 kilometers (6.2 mi) away, which would appear almost as bright as the candle.)

That's one heck of a bright star! As of April 2012 it's around magnitude 4.6, much dimmer.

 

[Damo ET]

That is spectacular! Nice work.

Damo

 

[QuantumPion]

Finally a nice clear night to try out my new XT8.

I took these with my Canon EOS 20D by just holding it up to the eyepiece. I didn't have the exposure set very well though, Jupiter was much too dim. In the view it was extremely bright and I could see 6+ moons quite clearly.

 

[davenn]

hey QuantumPion

well done for your first efforts :)
You will always find imaging the moon when it is full or near full to be difficult
The details always get washed out
The only time I photo the full moon is during eclipses :)

wait for try again during the earlier phases like first quarter and you will be amased at the detail in the craters and mountains you can get along the day/night terminator line

pretty good on Jupiter too, some of the bands are easily visible :)

Dave

 

[94JZA80]

hey Drakkith, i see you used narrowband filters, but what camera and telescope did you use for the Carina Nebula shot?

TIA,
Eric

 

[QuantumPion]

Madness!

p.s. I do have on order a T-adapter for my camera so I can bypass the camera lens and directly attach the EP to it. Not sure which method is better though. Just waiting for some clear weather now!

p.p.s. I think I'm going to need a counterweight for this thing.

 

[Jokmal]

My frist Astropic

Early this year I took my first photographs of the moon I did it with a friend's telescope and my iPad

 

[94JZA80]

Early this year I took my first photographs of the moon I did it with a friend's telescope and my iPad

very nice considering the equipment you had to work with

 

[spark802]

M101 with new 6" imaging newt

Heres my Messier 101 with my new Astro-tech imaging newt (6")and Canon 550, shot thru a laptop with BYEOS. April 13/2013.

 

[Drakkith]

Heres my Messier 101 with my new Astro-tech imaging newt (6")and Canon 550, shot thru a laptop with BYEOS. April 13/2013.

Not bad. All you need is more exposure time. Take more subs!

 

[spark802]

Not bad. All you need is more exposure time. Take more subs!

Hey Drak...yes i went through the stacking process with DSS and saved as fits per advice from an AP friend. All i could get was grey scale after stacking, so i may stack my 15 subs again and save as tifs...


Dave

 

[glappkaeft]

After stacking DSS automatically applies a contrast curve but you need to manually increase the color saturation before saving the image if you want more than just a tiny amount of color.

 

[spark802]

Ngc 7000

Here's my rendition of ngc 7000, I left the exif data in if you want to look.

 

[davenn]

Here's my rendition of ngc 7000, I left the exif data in if you want to look.

nice one :)
Had to think for a moment about what object I was looking at then remembered that NGC 7000 is the North American Nebula, in you photo lying on its side ;)
Maybe there's been a huge tectonic shift haha

Dave

 

[sas3]

What was that?

I was out trying to catch some shooting stars and seen a flash 2 times once while the camera was resetting and then caught the second flash with the camera, was it an Iridium flare?

Look to the left and down from the last 2▼ stars in the dippers bowl.

 

[czelaya]

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)

Why would you even apologize? I just made that my background picture for my laptop. Thanks.

 

[davenn]

I was out trying to catch some shooting stars and seen a flash 2 times once while the camera was resetting and then caught the second flash with the camera, was it an Iridium flare?

The Iridium Flares I have seen generally tend to be short bright streaks rather than the faint pinpoint you have caught there.
Maybe it was a rotating satellite that you caught its bright side reflecting the sun ?


Dave

 

[sas3]

The Iridium Flares I have seen generally tend to be short bright streaks rather than the faint pinpoint you have caught there.
Maybe it was a rotating satellite that you caught its bright side reflecting the sun ?Dave

I do not know what is was, it did not move, the flashes were in the same position both times, very strange...
Both pictures were 30 second exposures, don't know if there are any stationary satellites in that area.

 

[Borek]

Iridium flares look like that:

 

[davenn]

Iridium flares look like that:

yup exactly, often difficult to tell the difference to a meteor


Dave

 

[glappkaeft]

Unless it is a bright one (this one was "only" magnitude -7.7) when it looks more like this:

 

[sas3]

What I caught did not move, any ideas of what it was?

 

[glappkaeft]

Could be anything slow moving, a blimp, helicopter, high orbit satellite (depending on where you live even a geosynchronous satellite), etc.

If you know the date, time and location you can do a search here. Limit the search to say 10 degrees around RA 9h 32m, Dec +63deg40min and increase the magnitude cut-off as far as it will let you.

 

[sas3]

Could be anything slow moving, a blimp, helicopter, high orbit satellite (depending on where you live even a geosynchronous satellite), etc.

If you know the date, time and location you can do a search here. Limit the search to say 10 degrees around RA 9h 32m, Dec +63deg40min and increase the magnitude cut-off as far as it will let you.

Thanks, I think it was the Chandra X-Ray Observatory that I seen.

 

[spark802]

nice one :)
Had to think for a moment about what object I was looking at then remembered that NGC 7000 is the North American Nebula, in you photo lying on its side ;)
Maybe there's been a huge tectonic shift haha

Dave

Yes I am really happy I got it...my power supply to my laptop and mount was starting to drop so I got right at the end of the imaging session.

 

[davenn]

There was an Annular Solar eclipse path across part of Australia this morning ( Oz time)
I didnt travel for this one... I knew this one was coming up but kinda snuck up on me didnt realize it was going to be today till I heard a news item on the radio.

Fortunately I always carry my camera in the car ... tho I didnt have my big telephoto lens and I had to hurriedly make a solar filter out of one of those silver mylar survival blankets.

From my home area of Sydney City, SE coast of Australia, there was a reasonable chunk bitten out of the sun much like the Apple logo ;) of a partial eclipse.
Started at the upper left side of the sun and went anticlockwise around to the lower right of the sun where the moon finally left the solar disc.

I will post some pics when I get home tonite

Dave

 

[davenn]

As promised , a couple of pix :)

Pentax, K5, 55mm f/l, F10, 100 ISO, 2 layers of silver mylar across the front of the lens
The pix were ~ 20 - 30 minutes apart

now had i traveled to Queensland state, ~ 1400km to the nth of me I would have seen the sun looking like this...

This is a pic of an annular eclipse I took in Jan, 1991 from the city of Blenheim, at the top end of the South Island of New Zealand

cheers
Dave

 

[spark802]

Nice captures Davenn.

 

[spark802]

Aurora timlapse...

Here's a short 90 frame time-lapse. Shot from approx 50 degrees n latitude. ISO 1600, F/4, Lens 21mm, 30 sec exp, 15 sec interval. May 04/2013

 

[davenn]

Nice captures Davenn.

Thanky :) it really was a rushed last moment ( Oh heck, there's an eclipse happening right now) scenario haha

Dave

 

[Astronuc]

Natural beauty

http://i.space.com/images/i/000/029/060/i02/earth-sky-2nd-place-beauty.jpg
“Crossed Destinies” by Luc Perrot from Reunion Island of France (Indian Ocean) is the second place winner in the Beauty of the Night Sky category.

http://i.space.com/images/i/000/029/064/i02/earth-sky-3rd-place-beauty.jpg
"Meteor Magic" by Shannon Bileski for her March 2013 outstanding capture of a streaking fireball and colorful aurora over a snow-covered lake in Canada.

http://i.space.com/images/i/000/029/067/i02/earth-sky-5th-place-beauty.jpg
“Totality” by Geoff Sims. The 2012 Nov. 14 photo has captured the total solar eclipse over Queensland, Australia.

 

[Solon]

Night Vision Binoculars

I was looking into the BIPH (Binocular Photon Machine) binoculars, a bit of a novelty I suppose, but I got to wondering if the device, or others like it, would work in space, from the ISS say. I saw a video of stars being videoed in real time through them, something they can not do with a regular video camera in space, or from Earth either I don't think. The Moon and maybe Venus are bright enough to video. Anyway, just though there must be some use they could be put to if they would work in space.

 

[glappkaeft]

I was looking into the BIPH (Binocular Photon Machine) binoculars, a bit of a novelty I suppose, but I got to wondering if the device, or others like it, would work in space, from the ISS say. I saw a video of stars being videoed in real time through them, something they can not do with a regular video camera in space, or from Earth either I don't think. The Moon and maybe Venus are bright enough to video. Anyway, just though there must be some use they could be put to if they would work in space.

You can easily take video of even quite dim stars, in fact it is a standard technique used by amateurs for measuring the duration of occultations.

 

[Solon]

You can easily take video of even quite dim stars,

Not at 24 FPS you can't. The videos are strung together stills.

Mintron 12V6HC-EX

This camera accumulates light for up to two and a half seconds outputting apparently continuous video.

The BIPH shows the stars in real time, you can smoothly pan around.
There are 4, colour video cameras on Canadarm2 on the ISS, but you've never seen them used to view the stars, or planets, not even the Moon, so that's why I was wondering what a BIPH would display.

 

[glappkaeft]

Not at 24 FPS you can't. The videos are strung together stills.

Some of the videos you might find on the internet are strung together stills. However I have actually recorded video of some your "impossible" objects (Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, the Sun, the asteroid 30 Urania, field stars, etc). High FPS video is THE standard source for high quality planetary imaging and is not limited just to the moon and Venus. Stars is no problem either but generally there is no reason to use video for stars.

 

[Solon]

Stars is no problem either but generally there is no reason to use video for stars.

I read that some digital cameras will pick out the brighter stars at 1 second exposure, my old beast needs about 4 , and 10 to 15 seconds for best results. To tell me you can video stars at 24 FPS sounds highly doubtful. Do you have examples?
And that still doesn't answer as to if the BIPH will work in space. I see that they are thinking of taking one on the private manned Mars trip, as when (big if) they get there, they will be on the night side of Mars, so think they may be able to see something with the device.

Comet Pan-STARRS through a BIPH. (From Earth of course)

 

[davenn]

Some of the videos you might find on the internet are strung together stills. However I have actually recorded video of some your "impossible" objects (Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, the Sun, the asteroid 30 Urania, field stars, etc). High FPS video is THE standard source for high quality planetary imaging and is not limited just to the moon and Venus. Stars is no problem either but generally there is no reason to use video for stars.

the Sun, Moon, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn are simple with video, they are very bright compared to stars

the brightest stars yes, most of those you will probably capture but unless the the camera has a particularly sensitive sensor, you are not likely to get much below 2nd magnitude

Dave

 

[glappkaeft]

In the case of 30 Urania we used a middle of the road CCD digital video camera (a planetary "webcam") and caught the magnitude 12.7 reference star we needed (the mag 8.9 star was completely overexposed and thus useless as a reference) using 2 fps. If we had a more suitable camera (the planetary webcam has tiny pixels and creates an extremely over-sampled image) we would have been able to do much better.

We can remove a factor 12 or 2,7 magnitudes from the stars to get the "same" image with 24 FPS. We used a pretty large telescope (a 41 cm f/9) but even if we shrink the optics to a 10 cm f/9 (say a cheap achromatic refractor) nothing much happens as the Etendue (light gathering ability per pixel = aperture area * solid angle of pixel) remains constant.

I have attached an annotated still frame from the video taken 2012-03-03, 17:42:22.652 UT. Note the large size of even the dimmer stars due to the extreme oversampling.

 

[Thomas1989]

Some absolutely phenomenal pics in this thread, brilliant work everyone. I'd love to give this a go when I can afford the kit. On top of Mount Sinai back in the winter of 08 was the clearest I've ever seen the night sky, such an incredible sight. What I'd have done to photograph that.

 

[Solon]

An alternative to the BIPH, a telescope eyepiece. Cheaper than the BIPH, but still expensive.
http://www.ceoptics.com/
Maybe he will know if it would work in space, nobody else seems to.

 

[spark802]

Crazy Aurora from Friday night...

Here's a time-lapse I took from 50 degrees N lat Fri night into Saturday am. Stitched together from about 450 frames. This series of Aural events went on all night and I have some still images from 430 am Saturday.https://vimeo.com/69394631

 

[Drakkith]

Here's a time-lapse I took from 50 degrees N lat Fri night into Saturday am. Stitched together from about 450 frames. This series of Aural events went on all night and I have some still images from 430 am Saturday.


https://vimeo.com/69394631

Neat!

 

[spark802]

Thanks Drak...

 

[spark802]

Crazy lightning storm ...counts as Astrophotography?

Here's a lightning storm that rolled through my neck of the woods last weekend.

https://vimeo.com/69847939

 

[spark802]

Orion is back!

I imaged Messier 42 in the constellation Orion Saturday am. Orion is rising at about 130 am at my Lat of 50n.

http://flic.kr/p/fSJ5Nr

 

[Drakkith]

I imaged Messier 42 in the constellation Orion Saturday am. Orion is rising at about 130 am at my Lat of 50n.

www.flickr.com/photos/49843779@N08/9763030405/

Not bad!

 

[spark802]

Thanks Drak !