Our Beautiful Universe - Photos and Videos

[davenn]

Venus tonight very low in the sky.

very cool

 

[Andy Resnick]

Crop of Rosette nebula

 

[DennisN]

Last night I did some quick and dirty astrophotography with mobile phone only.
I went to a city park with just my phone and a tripod and took some random shots .

(Software used: DeepSkyStacker, Photoshop and detections by http://nova.astrometry.net/)

Ursa Major and Ursa Minor
(ISO 800, Exposure: 5 s, 2 combined stacks of 20 photos each)

Detections:

Bootes
(ISO 800, Exposure: 5 s, 20 stacked photos)

Detections:

Cygnus
(ISO 800, Exposure: 5 s, 10 stacked photos)

Detections:

Draco
(ISO 800, Exposure: 5 s, 10 stacked photos)

Detections:

 

[chemisttree]

thank you , I see...
(I mostly did some colour saturation as well .. somebody say it could be real colour discrimination of different rock types but I am not sure )

I believe that is called "Mineral Processing".

 

[bruha]

Hi I attach next moon image, this one is by eyepiece Hyperion 5 mm mounted to Nikon body -but this camera is quite old and thus not very good.
... no any planet is observable in Czech rep. now (within reasonable time )

Lot of succes

 

[chemisttree]

... no any planet is observable in Czech rep. now (within reasonable time)

Same here in Texas!

 

[davenn]

... no any planet is observable in Czech rep. now (within reasonable time

Same here in Texas!

You both need to get out of bed a bit earlier

Mars, Jupiter and Saturn are visible in the southern sky before dawn

 

[bruha]

Hi, yes I see, (for me problem as I like night quiet. and go to bed not before 1 )
Did you catch some images of these planets?

 

[davenn]

Hi, yes I see, (for me problem as I like night quiet. and go to bed not before 1 )
Did you catch some images of these planets?

Yes, I posted on here a month or so back :)

 

[chemisttree]

The Moon tonight. 6/7/2020

Astrotech 80ED, Oberwerk BLEM tripod, Universal Astronomics Micro Star Deluxe mount, Televue 25mm Plossl with Celestron #93608 variable polarizer, iPhone 6 (afocal) in HDR mode.
This took about 5 minutes to set up, figure out and photo. I used Orion’s Steadypix Quick Smartphone Telescope Photo Adapter that I recently purchased from OPT for teleconferencing. Had to remove the rubber eyecup on the plossl eyepiece before attaching the Steadypix adapter. That adapter is a very good deal! The clamp is self centering and the adapter holds the iPhone (sans Otter case) very securely. Good setup for bright objects through the telescope.

 

[bruha]

Hello,
its look very good . Can I ask-is it this adapter fit to hyperion eyepiece as well?
Thank you

 

[DennisN]

I had fun last night. I was filming and taking photos the Moon through my cheap Chinese scope.
Afterwards when I unmounted my scope I noticed that a bright spot to the left of it had appeared.
Jupiter, I thought. So I quickly mounted my scope and got to see Jupiter with all four major moons visible (Europa, Io, Jupiter, Callisto and Ganymede).
I'm not kidding, I almost got tears in my eyes .
I ended up taking a lot more photos, and I will try to do a composite image of the Moon later, and see if I can make photo stacks of Jupiter with the moons. If so, I'll post them later in this thread.

In the meantime, here is a movie of the Moon last night with plenty of details filmed:
(some clouds appear towards the end obscuring it)

 

[chemisttree]

Hello,
its look very good . Can I ask-is it this adapter fit to hyperion eyepiece as well?
Thank you

Probably not without a T-ring spacer. About 10mm should do it. It would likely fit hard, straight-sided eyepieces with sides about 1cm high near the top. It doesn’t fit Celestron X-Cel (old style) either.

But attaching it doesn’t mean it will work. When I attached my 7mm Nagler to it, the iPhone could only see about 10 degrees of the available 82 degrees my eye can see. Not sure that I understand why. Perhaps the light leaving the eyepiece diverges into an 82 degree cone and the iPhone’s camera can only capture a part of that?

 

[bruha]

Hi thank you.
I have still one eyepiece: Sky-Watcher SWA-58-3.2. mm Plossl. Do you think this one could fit..?

Thanks and lot of succes

 

[DennisN]

Here's a couple of merged movie clips I filmed of Jupiter and the four large moons last night.
From left to right: Europa, Io, Jupiter, Callisto, Ganymede.
A bit noisy, but hey, they move!
(Too see it in 4K, click the gear at the right botttom in youtube and select quality: 4K)

The planet Jupiter with the four large moons (Telescope, 4K)
And I did a quick approximate calculation to get a feel for the distance to the planet:

Jupiter distance from Sun: 778 570 000 km
Earth distance from Sun: 149 598 023 km
Distance from Earth to Jupiter (ca): (778 570 000 - 149 598 023 ) = 628 971 977 km
Earth circumference: 40 075 km
628 971 977 / 40 075 = 15 695

So the distance to Jupiter is approximately equal to the distance traveled around the Earth 15 695 times. And this is PF, so if I got it wrong I expect to be corrected.
(yes, I know it also depends on where the planets are at the moment, but it is an approximation )EDIT:

Haha, I checked what "Semi-major axis" is, since it was those numbers I used. I thought it was (sort of) radius, but it is (sort of) diameter. So the distance from Earth to Jupiter ought to be about half of the value above, i.e. (628 971 977 km / 2) = 314 485 988 km.

Which yields (314 485 988 / 40 075) = 7 847, i.e. the distance to Jupiter is approximately equal to the distance traveled around the Earth 7 847 times.

(stricken parts were wrong, see edit below)

EDIT 2:

Haha, no I was correct the first time, but read wrong the second time.
Semi-major axis is radius (sort of).

 

[chemisttree]

... And I did a quick approximate calculation to get a feel for the distance to the planet:

Jupiter distance from Sun: 778 570 000 km
Earth distance from Sun: 149 598 023 km
Distance from Earth to Jupiter (ca): (778 570 000 - 149 598 023 ) = 628 971 977 km
Earth circumference: 40 075 km
628 971 977 / 40 075 = 15 695

So the distance to Jupiter is approximately equal to the distance traveled around the Earth 15 695 times. And this is PF, so if I got it wrong I expect to be corrected.
(yes, I know it also depends on where the planets are at the moment, but it is an approximation )

Seems right to me but only when the Earth and Jupiter are at opposition. When at conjunction you would add the distances. Of course this doesn’t account for the two planet’s orbital eccentricities.
My calculation for the distance at conjunction:

778,570,000
+ 149,598,023
———————
928,168,023 (I’m ignoring significant digits here)

928,168,023 / 40,075 = 23,161

So the distance between Jupiter and Earth ranges from 15,695 and 23,161 times around the surface of the Earth.

 

[chemisttree]

Hi thank you.
I have still one eyepiece: Sky-Watcher SWA-58-3.2. mm Plossl. Do you think this one could fit..?

Thanks and lot of succes

It should fit. My UWA-58 degree 7mm fits it perfectly once I remove the rubber eyecup.

 

[chemisttree]

This type of eyepiece doesn’t work. The angled sides cause it to be crooked in the holder.

 

[bruha]

Thank you it looks very good , I will try get it

 

[Andy Resnick]

The great cluster in Hercules is in a good viewing position for me this time of year:

deets: 3.6 hrs at 400/2.8 ISO 2500

and I've gotten much better results now with my panoramas- this one features the North American Nebula, 4 different fields of view @ 400mm, image size 9.5k x 7.5k pixels. There are a lot of interesting objects to be found:

(IC 5076)

(NGC 7048)

 

[DennisN]

Beautiful photos!

I've gotten much better results now with my panoramas

Are you still using Hugin or have you found any new software for panoramas?

 

[Andy Resnick]

Beautiful photos!

Are you still using Hugin or have you found any new software for panoramas?

Thanks! For this one, I used the stacking software.

 

[DennisN]

Thanks! For this one, I used the stacking software.

Which software, I wonder? And do you have to manually/semi-manually align the images when making panoramas? I'm asking because I've been looking for a software that can automatically do this with star photos. I haven't had any luck so far.

 

[DennisN]

Saturn through my scope this night:
- it was also the very first time I observed the planet with rings, it was awesome...

 

[davenn]

well done :)

 

[bruha]

Hi , it is quite nice , which scope and camera you use?

 

[Andy Resnick]

Which software, I wonder? And do you have to manually/semi-manually align the images when making panoramas? I'm asking because I've been looking for a software that can automatically do this with star photos. I haven't had any luck so far.

I did not do an exhaustive trade study before purchase, but I am using AstroPixelProcessor and am quite pleased:

https://www.astropixelprocessor.com/

 

[DennisN]

Hi , it is quite nice , which scope and camera you use?

Thanks!
I used my cheap $35 Chinese scope, and the camera on my LG G4 phone (where the camera settings can be manually set), fitted to the scope with an adapter similar to the one @chemisttree posted a photo of above.
But his eyepiece look much more fancy than mine.

I first used an eyepiece that gave 15x magnification to locate Saturn, then I fitted an eyepiece that gave 50x magnification. I also used digital zoom on the camera to help with the focusing. The photo I posted above is done with RegiStax, which analyzed a 10 second film I shot of Saturn and produced a photo. I also did some postprocessing of the photo in Photoshop.

I have a couple of more films I shot of Saturn, and I will join them together and see if RegiStax can do an improvement with more film material.

 

[bruha]

Hi and thank you for answer.
I have ordered mentioned adapter, so I hope I will make some improvement . Anyway I use Registax as well and have some results but up to now mainly just with moon image...
As sample I attach my Saturn image made by Compact camera adjusted by holder front of eyepiece Hyperion 8 mm... not enough satysfing

 

[DennisN]

The Moon, 7 June 2020, my first composite image made of 13 individual photos:

And another composite image made of 4 photos: