ZapperZ's Great Outdoors Photo Contest

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Nice Andre :)
 
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Thanks Gad, you are kind. The reason why I look so ugly is not only because I am, but also because I press my lips together to force normal breathing, avoiding hyperventilating during that long climb.
 
Ugly?.. Trust me, you don't want to see me while hiking. :biggrin:

Hyperventilating is a problem for me, I just keep taking short breaks to avoid it.
 
Finally, a few clear nights in a row- here's andromeda (now up to 1 hr integration time)

http://imageshack.us/a/img525/3553/1hrtifrgb.jpg

and the Orion nebula (2 minutes or so)

http://imageshack.us/a/img692/3126/orionzi.jpg

The tracking mount, while extremely user-friendly, is definitely a big step up. First, the total weight of everything is now about 100kg- I have to let the system 'settle' into the damp ground for a minute or so to stabilize, and moving it around ain't trivial. Second, while the polar alignment step really couldn't be much simpler- a newbie like me mastered it after 2 or 3 nights- my backyard has a lot of mature trees, severely restricting the number of places I can set up and directions I can look after alignment. Lastly, because it's cold out, I have a problem with focus drift as the lens cools down. It's not a problem *if* there are bright stars in the field of view, but for Andromeda, I have to rotate the lens, re-focus, and then use the setting circles to get me back to where I was.

However, the biggest difficulty I struggled with (and still struggle with) is weight balancing- it appears that the declination axis (analogous to longitude), which holds the mounting dovetail is asymmetric: there is a front/back orientation that must be used, otherwise the declination axis will experience a fairly large torque when looking toward zenith. I didn't find any mention of this in the manual, and I spent quite a few nights cursing fairly loudly before I figured it out.

With Orion, I played around with different acquisition times- 30s is a little too long, leading to frames lost due to 'wobble'- here's a tight crop of 9 successive frames:

http://imageshack.us/a/img7/8118/montagecgo.jpg

Of the 9, maybe 3 are acceptable. This is *not* due to atmospheric seeing problems. Seen as an animation, the stars undergo sinusoidal oscillations in one axis (right ascension, I think), and a slow drift in the other. I think this is 'periodic error correction' and 'declination drift', neither of which I can easily correct. So instead, I just use shorter exposures- 10s seems to give me a >80% acceptable image rate, and is still long enough that I don't have to worry about burning out another shutter anytime soon.
 
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A cocktail of of outdoor pictures taken by someoe I know during a journey. :smile:

0710110407297ft7zguk2vzl.jpg

071011040730kuvtnwxj78fnmhfy0x70.jpg

071011040730u086j1yikus30de.jpg

071011060738z3qhiwkjui9dd.jpg

071011060738wfmkhqw2dgu82mjrlyr.jpg

07101106073996uj31coy6co.jpg

071011060705sj06ox1fakodr.jpg

0714110307279xnn1mhcrczu37d.jpg
 
On a ridge - http://screen.yahoo.com/motorcycle-ridge-riding-084000429.html
 
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Last night, moon's closest approach to Jupiter (85mm focal length):

http://imageshack.us/a/img138/2082/dsc029311.jpg

Jupiter is the bright blue dot above the moon, and the Pleiades are visible to the right as well. A well-defined half-moon shaped glare spot is visible. 'Zooming out' to 15mm reveals Orion off to the left:

http://imageshack.us/a/img109/4415/resultofdsc02939.jpg
 
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This was certainly outdoors, shot last week, a panorama of 7 pictures sewed together.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/22026080/Panorama_f-tn.jpg

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/22026080/Panorama_f.jpg

The weather gives a complete wrong image of how the holiday has been, because we also have seen this:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/22026080/waterspout.jpg
 
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Andre said:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/22026080/Panorama_f-tn.jpg

Great view. Where is it?
 
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Ah, I wondered if there were enough clues to have a landmark solve. But I guess not.

It's in south east Spain, the village in front is probably Orba
 
Andre said:
Ah, I wondered if there were enough clues to have a landmark solve. But I guess not.

http://www.panoramio.com/photo/59514378

It's in south east Spain, the village in front is probably Orba

More like Parcent :wink:

Let's face it - it was a sheer luck. But its is exactly kind of the road I would take being in the area.
 
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Couldn't see the comet, but these were a nice alternative:

http://imageshack.us/a/img841/9532/dsc03497bu.jpg
(downsized 50%)

http://imageshack.us/a/img62/5378/dsc035061filtered1.jpg

http://imageshack.us/a/img341/2730/dsc03529we.jpg
 
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Not the greatest quality but I caught it. Dulles Airport is about 15 miles due west of here - hence the aircraft flybys.
Yay, my first comet! :smile:

PanSTARRS1.jpg


PanSTARRS2.jpg


PanSTARRS3.jpg
 
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Borg said:
Not the greatest quality but I caught it. Dulles Airport is about 15 miles due west of here - hence the aircraft flybys.
Yay, my first comet! :smile:

Nice job!
 
The weather is getting nicer- here's the result of a few days observing M51 during 'below average' seeing conditions:

http://imageshack.us/a/img189/3634/1h48mintifrgbfiltered1.jpg

Total integration time = 1.75 hours, each frame was typically 20 s ISO 3200.
 
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I was able to image 5 moons of Saturn- these images were taken 24 hours apart:





(one moon gets hidden by Saturn's glare in pic#2)
 
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The photo is big, so the link is posted.

http://gethanh.com/mlffat/files/2127.jpg

Location: A village in Al Baha Province located at the south of the Arabian Peninsula.
 
I almost threw this one out, but it's actually a lucky shot:



Both the windmill blade and support post are parallel with walkways, which helps lead the eye around the whole image.
 
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