Stargazing First up is M13, 20 exposures of 30 seconds

[Brinx]

Last night I played around a bit with my small bresser skylux telescope (70/700 refractor) in combination with a ToUcam pro II webcam. I made a mosaic of the moon out of 7 separate AVIs which were stacked in registax. The seeing wasn't very good (it's been quite warm here in Holland lately!) and the moon was only about 20 degrees above the horizon. Click on the link for a full-size version (1000x1200 pixels).

http://img88.imageshack.us/my.php?image=moon150720062kd7.png

 

[larkspur]

Nice job Brinx!

 

[scott1]

I'm not the one to take this picture but:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v502/Einhanderkiller/summermilkyway_gross.jpg
That's a mirror that a found for some reason the orginal site is down
I'll post the orginal when the site is up, it's a better picuture

 

[russ_watters]

...Continued from my "I Did It thread. First night using the new scope, I'm going for quantity over quality tonight - I'm using my old DSI Color instead of my new DSI II b/w. This way I get color images in one shot instead of needing 4 sets. Obviously, the sensitivity is lower, and the resolution is too. So far, my paper dew shield is getting the job done...

First up is M13, 20 exposures of 30 seconds. Though I took some 5 and 15 second exposures to compare, I'll call this my first real image with this scope. In darkening the background, I may have clipped it a little. I only spent a few minutes on the processing.

 

[russ_watters]

Here's M57 - about 40 30 second subs.

Also, not an astrophoto, but a good one of me with the scope. Note the Pleaides in the background (totally accidental). It's a 5 second exposure with a flaslight illuminating the telescope.

 

[russ_watters]

M27, 20 frames, 30 sec. Perhaps I forgot to turn on dark subtraction - I got a lot of hot pixels and amp glow. I'll have to go back and work on that. Still, some of the faint nebulosity (the handlebars) is visible.

 

[russ_watters]

Over Thanksgiving, I took my telescope to the Poconos and spent 9 hours in a random parking lot... (yes, I am somewhat insane)

First up is a 45 second luminance frame of M81. I took rgb photos too, but in the 4 hours since I set up, the temperature dropped 30 degrees, my telescope shrank and went out of focus, and I didn't notice. Oops - still climbing that learning curve...

M77 came out pretty well, but the stars are slightly elongated from continued minor tracking issues (its a lot better, though).

M15 shows a big improvement over that M13 photo from a month ago. The scope was a little out of collimation, which I think is why the stars were a little smeared on that one.

I'll probably need to start autoguiding soon. I was hoping for consistent tracking up to 2 minutes, but it isn't happening. I may be able to tweak the mount a little (the tracking is better sometimes than others, suggesting an adjustment in the gears may help), but at my focal length, I probably won't be able to get it to take longer exposures without a guidescope.

 

[russ_watters]

I also redid M27. I think I need some work in color balancing - M27 is more green than my image has it.

 

[-Job-]

Those are some pretty cool photos. What kind of telescope would one need to see stuff like that? How much exposure do you need?

 

[russ_watters]

My new telescope is the Orion Atlas 11 (a C11 with an Orion Atlas mount) in 147 and the camera is a Meade DSI II Pro. The objects I've taken pictures of already are relatively bright, so you don't need quite that much for them (though more exposure would be good).