Donce

Quite a few years ago (in 2004) I posted here some very basic pics of the moon, but they were really basic and I've done much better since then. So I thought, I might start to share the images here. Astrophotography is my another passion and, with time, I acquired equipment needed to take pics of deep sky objects. My current setup looks like this:



Except there's a film camera attached, just for demonstration purposes, I actually shoot with digital. Currently I use a modified Canon 550D (T2i) camera.

I usually tend to shoot the less-known and not so popular objects, but my last picture, taken on Jan. 27th, is the pop - Flame and Horsehead nebulae:



The temperature was quite cold, -20°C, and there was probably an air current inside the tube, that's why the stars seem to have tails. There are a few other imperfections, but in general, I'm almost satisfied.

I will post more images when I have them, but don't expect frequent updates, because the right conditions to shoot the sky don't happen very often. Of course, the sky must be clear, with no moon, weekend is highly preferred, because I most often go to a dark sky site with no (or little) light pollution, far from the city lights. And there must be no strong wind. There are many other things that can ruin everything, so sometimes I don't have anything new for months :P

Mhm, I felt like I had to post something in blogs, so here ya go...

A little less that a month ago, I finally bought a new 6" telescope, my first one, not counting the 2" handheld refractor that I've had for like 10 years. The same scope is sold on Ebay here.

A few days ago, my brother bought a digital Sony camera, so I decided to try some simple shooting through the scope's eyepiece. I've taken a few photos of the sky before, that was about 9 years ago, but I did 'piggybacking', used the scope just for compensating the earth's rotation while exposing. I don't have a photo adapter, so I just put the camera's objective to the scope's eyepiece and took the shots. So here they are:

Moon at 30x magnification. This is the best one. Since the magnification was not high, the image was focused well and didn't move here and there much. It's my desktop wallpaper now :)

Moon at 56x magnification. This is not as good, somewhat blurry, and reasons are clear: the higher the magnification, the more the image shakes because the atmospheric turbulence, and the handheld camera also moves a bit during the shot.

Moon at 115x magnification. Bleh. Just one big blur.

All three images of the moon were reduced to save webspace.

I also tried shooting Jupiter and Saturn at 115x, but, as expected, I didn't obtain good images: absolutely no detail is visible in Jupiter, and even Saturn ring is barely visible.

The next time the sky is clear, I'll try again at lower magnifications and camera's resolution set to maximum. I don't expect to get something significantly better but it will still be worth a try.