The Stargazing Thread!

[Kozak]

How???

Also, your embed is broken, link works though.

I can't seem to get any embeds to work.

But i started from scratch with Paint.net and Pixlr. mostly paint.net though.

[kookoo_gr]

Photo of the Lunar Eclipse

[Winston]

The best I could manage.
Shooting for about 7 hours solid from midnight through sunrise.
Conditions were perfect, however it was my first time doing time lapses of any sort and somewhat of a learning experience.
I'd have done a lot differently.
Having only two 16gb cards limited me a lot; I had to make shorter, lower framerate time lapses than I would have liked.
Fairly pleased with my exposures however, which is always going to be tricky when the light levels change this much while the camera is set to a fixed exposure throughout.
I aimed to overexpose the fully lit moon enough that at peak eclipse it would be correctly exposed, and I think I pretty much nailed that.

[Rareden]

Greetings, finally got a decent EQ mount for my scope, heres a test shot of the Orion nebula.
full moon was up unfortunately, so rather a lot of light pollution obscuring the dim details.
68 1min 20sec exposures with autoguiding, full moon was preventing me from using a longer exposure

Spoiler

 

[Endersmens]

12 hours ago, Rareden said:

Greetings, finally got a decent EQ mount for my scope, heres a test shot of the Orion nebula.
full moon was up unfortunately, so rather a lot of light pollution obscuring the dim details.
68 1min 20sec exposures with autoguiding, full moon was preventing me from using a longer exposure

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Absolutely amazing @Rareden!

[cubinator]

13 hours ago, Rareden said:

 

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Beautiful! I tried looking at the nebula through a telescope and couldn't see anything, you really need a long exposure to get this sort of detail.

[kookoo_gr]

22 hours ago, Rareden said:

Greetings, finally got a decent EQ mount for my scope, heres a test shot of the Orion nebula.
full moon was up unfortunately, so rather a lot of light pollution obscuring the dim details.
68 1min 20sec exposures with autoguiding, full moon was preventing me from using a longer exposure

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very nice photo for a beggining. as for the exposure once light pollution from the moon is limmited (i usually start and stop photographing once the moon is 75% full) go up to 5 or 10 minutes. also if you are good at proccessing you can take at about 25 photos of 30 seconds in order to blend the core of orion nebula to the 5 or 10 minute photo and thus not having the core of the nebula overexposured. what equipment do you use?

Edited January 25, 2016 by kookoo_gr

[Shpaget]

@Rareden, what kind of telescope was this taken with? It's amazing! Also, what was the urban light pollution situation? How far from a city you needed to go to get this view?

[Rareden]

I have a celestron 8" scope with a f6.35 focal reducer, Celestron AVX mount, off axis guider with a nexguide attached and a Infrared modified canon 600d as well as a 6D for non nebula shots.
yes city light pollution was a factor, i was just in my backyard, i usually try to get at least 40km away from a city when doing astrophotography 

Edited January 25, 2016 by Rareden

[Dartguy]

10 hours ago, Shpaget said:

@Rareden, what kind of telescope was this taken with? It's amazing! Also, what was the urban light pollution situation? How far from a city you needed to go to get this view?

That is a beautiful photo.  But you can't see that kind of detail with only your eyes.  You can, however see it pretty well with a decent telescope, and the darker the skies, the better.

 

I saw this with my old Meade 8" newt a few weeks ago and was blown away at the detail.  I had never seen it so well before.

[Matuchkin]

On 02/07/2015 at 10:22 AM, kookoo_gr said:

I use an RC8'' on an HEQ5 Pro mount or a skywatcher ED 80 for deep sky imaging along with a cooled CCD camera, for planetary imaging or obsering i use a skywatcher dob 8". I live at a a Rural/suburban transition area so i can easily photograpnh many DSO's once the wheather allows it. Here are some photos i have taken over the years

M42

The Horsehead Nebula

Veil nebula

Saturn

Mars

Jupiter

M106

Milky Way Panorama

NGC7635 The Bubble Nebula

M16 The Eagle Nebula

M13

Venus

Jupiter Animation

Jupiter Animation

and here are more pictures i have taken http://www.astrobin.com/users/kookoo_gr/

- - - Updated - - -

For those that want to start observing the night sky with their eyes or any other optic device a good program to use is Stellarium. It's a free planetarium program and once you enter the coordinates of the observing site you can have an idea of what to expect to see at various hours of the night.

Wait, those nebulas are actually in pink and blue? I thought those images on the NASA website were in false color...

[kookoo_gr]

all images are in LRGB but the bubble nebula and m16 are HaRGB (Lumminance, Red, Green, Blue, Hydrogen α)

[Rareden]

16 hours ago, Matuchkin said:

Wait, those nebulas are actually in pink and blue? I thought those images on the NASA website were in false color...

 Correct me if im wrong but I think the colours you see In a nebula are mainly from the type of gas being ionized if its a emission nebula like orion, pink/red is hydrogen usually with a hydrogen alpha pass as well if they are using a infrared sensitive CCD, blue  is nitrogen and green is oxygen?.  
I think the colours can be determined with a spectrometer or a Discharge tube.

[Matuchkin]

1 minute ago, Rareden said:

 Correct me if im wrong but I think the colours you see In a nebula are mainly from the type of gas being ionized if its a emission nebula like orion, pink/red is hydrogen usually with a hydrogen alpha pass as well if they are using a infrared sensitive CCD, blue  is nitrogen and green is oxygen?.  
I think the colours can be determined with a spectrometer or a Discharge tube.

But that guy said he didn't use any spectrometers, filters, etc...

[Camacha]

18 hours ago, Matuchkin said:

Wait, those nebulas are actually in pink and blue? I thought those images on the NASA website were in false color...

A friendly request - please do not quote the full post for a reply of just one line

[Matuchkin]

12 minutes ago, Camacha said:

A friendly request - please do not quote the full post for a reply of just one line

I know. I didn't know what part of the passage to quote to prove my point. I just gave up and quoted the whole thing.

[Rareden]

2 hours ago, Matuchkin said:

But that guy said he didn't use any spectrometers, filters, etc...

you dont need them, a spectrometer is used to identify what wavelengths of light are coming from the nebula, filters will block certain wavelengths.
Every element gives off a certain wavelength of light when ionized which the camera picks up during a long exposure, you can then identify what elements are in the nebula based on the colors/wavelengths being emitted 

[livefree75]

Amazing! If I had seen those pics on Google Images or something, I would have thought they were Hubble photos!

[Rareden]

Got a shot of the Eta Carinae core last night. stack of 21 3min 20sec exposures.
The weird distortion in the stars towards the bottom of the image is due to the nature of my telescopes mirror unfortunately.

 

Spoiler

 

Edited February 1, 2016 by Rareden

[cubinator]

I tried looking at Uranus today, but couldn't see anything due to light pollution. I'll have to try again some other time of year, when it appears in the clear east instead of the hazy west. 

[Rareden]

2 hours ago, cubinator said:

I tried looking at Uranus today, but couldn't see anything due to light pollution. I'll have to try again some other time of year, when it appears in the clear east instead of the hazy west. 

Uranus will be rather difficult to see as well due to its distance from us, probably will be a faint green dot.

[cubinator]

7 hours ago, Rareden said:

Uranus will be rather difficult to see as well due to its distance from us, probably will be a faint green dot.

With the telescope I'm using, it should be visible as a small disk, a little smaller than Saturn. I'll have to go out in November-December, when Uranus is rising the evening to avoid the city lights in the west. Hopefully I can find a day that's not so cold my fingers freeze after fifteen minutes of searching...

[Rareden]

On 2/1/2016 at 2:33 AM, cubinator said:

With the telescope I'm using, it should be visible as a small disk, a little smaller than Saturn. I'll have to go out in November-December, when Uranus is rising the evening to avoid the city lights in the west. Hopefully I can find a day that's not so cold my fingers freeze after fifteen minutes of searching...

Nice, whats the focal length of it?

[cubinator]

21 hours ago, Rareden said:

Nice, whats the focal length of it?

Not sure about the specs, it's enough to see the bands on Jupiter and Saturn's rings pretty well. I hardly remember ever looking at the rocky planets with it, but it could probably see the crescent of Venus, and maybe some features on Mars. It's an old Celestron, orange, and I don't have the manual or anything within easy access.

Edit: Hey, whaddaya know, it's printed on the side:     Aperture 8 in     f/10     efl 80 in
Before I saw that (all the time up until now) I was just guessing, I'll have to check with Stellarium and see just how well I can actually see it!

Edit 2: It'd be barely distinguishable from the other stars.

BTW it seems to be a catadioptric telescope.

Edited February 24, 2016 by cubinator

[FishInferno]

So many good images happening!  I have been in the market for a good telescope, and I think I am set on the Zhumell z8, but I figured I should ask here for any advice.