Anybody here take any pictures?

[Rjhere]

i began shooting pictures of the moon couple of days ago, have gotten some results, not good though as a result of a toy telescope and poor stability with my hands but i have some:

i am obsessed with taking a good picture of Tycho, but i cannot do it. These are just two pictures of a album i made. I am also about to buy a new telescope in some months time.

(For some reason i cant get my pictures up...)

Edited July 22, 2013 by Rjhere

[Nexustrimean]

Here is a Directory of really cool mars Photos that i helped with for an engineering class in 2006-2007, These two were my group, but most of the rest of them are pretty neat as well. They were taken with the Themis Camera, on Mars Global Surveyor.

http://www.mars.asu.edu/~phil/ses100/V21308001.png

http://www.mars.asu.edu/~phil/ses100/V21305001.png

here are the others http://www.mars.asu.edu/~phil/ses100/

Edited July 22, 2013 by Nexustrimean

[Motokid600]

MotoKid your photos look wonderful what camera and telescope do you use? Once I get my 60D I will try to use my telescope too.

Its a Canon EOS Rebel. Its an entry level DSLR. And the Telescope is a CPC1100... not so entry level. I had a bad case of aperture fever, but it was worth it. I haven't even scratched the surface of this hobby. If you can id recommend getting a DSLR with a modified IR Cut-Off filter. ONLY if you plan on using it strictly for astrophotography

A stock camera

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hiroc/2504469109/

Modded camera

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hiroc/4353346615/

NOT MY PICTURES ( I wish ) Courtesry of Hiro on the Cloudy Nights forum

Here is a Directory of really cool mars Photos that i helped with for an engineering class in 2006-2007, These two were my group, but most of the rest of them are pretty neat as well. They were taken with the Themis Camera, on Mars Global Surveyor.

http://www.mars.asu.edu/~phil/ses100/V21308001.png

http://www.mars.asu.edu/~phil/ses100/V21305001.png

here are the others http://www.mars.asu.edu/~phil/ses100/

THAT is really something else Nexus how exactly did you obtain these pictures? You said it was part of an engineering class. Did you guys actually have control over MGS and where it took the pics? Or did you stitch them together? Either way man really good stuff.

Edited July 23, 2013 by Motokid600

[Echostatic]

Full moon tonite. Couldn't quite fit it all.

[Nexustrimean]

THAT is really something else Nexus how exactly did you obtain these pictures? You said it was part of an engineering class. Did you guys actually have control over MGS and where it took the pics? Or did you stitch them together? Either way man really good stuff.

Nothing as cool as that, WE had to do all the math for the orbit and when to take the pictures ect... but did not actually get any direct control unfortunately. It was still neat, we had to write mini proposals for why we chose our photograph sites, and what we were hoping to accomplish, it was rather limited in our actual involvement, but the results are pretty spectacular none the less. in three hard drive crashes, pretty much all that has survived is the link, i don't have any of the proposals anymore or any of the other information. But it was one of the highlights of an overall fairly dull class.

Edited July 26, 2013 by Nexustrimean

[GalaxiesFinestToday]

Well, i Have a telescope that can see the moon pretty darn good but, just how do you take a picture of it in the telescope,ive tried putting the camera lens inside the telescope lens but didn't turn out well.

[Echostatic]

Well, i Have a telescope that can see the moon pretty darn good but, just how do you take a picture of it in the telescope,ive tried putting the camera lens inside the telescope lens but didn't turn out well.

I have an iPhone mount that holds the camera about where the eye would be over the eyepiece. It works pretty well.

[PakledHostage]

Sorry in advance to anyone who's upset that I'm reviving an old thread, but it is a good thread. There are some great photos in here for anyone who hasn't browsed through them. Here's another of mine that I'd like to share:

I took it out the window of a B757-300. You can see the winglet protruding above the wing tip light. It was a bit hard to hold the camera still the whole time that the shutter was open, but the aurora was very bright so I only needed to use an EV of about -2 (4 seconds, f/3.5, ISO 1600).

[Kryten]

What flight were you on where you could see that kind of thing?

[PakledHostage]

We actually weren't even that far north when I took that photo. We were south of Goose Bay, Labrador. It was just a particularly active night. The University of Fairbanks Aurora forecast intensity was only at 3, but they were brighter and more active than I expected for that intensity level.

[RogueMason]

The only planet I've seen with my Celestron Astromaster 130EQ is Jupiter, and this is the best picture I've taken thus far:

The only reason I haven't seen the other planets is because they are eluding me. Curse living near a city, and curse having houses and trees everywhere!

Of course, I have looked at the Moon as well, but none of my pictures of our neighbour do it any justice. The amount of detail I get with my scope is just incredible

[-Velocity-]

I do a lot of visual observing, but I can't see myself ever really doing any imaging. If you're visual observing, then you're observing the actual sky with your eyeballs and a big light collector. You're observing how an object actually looks like from a much closer distance (especailly ifI you're at a 7mm exit pupil).

If you're imaging, you're observing a computer screen. I can get far superior images just looking through the Hubble archive. I'd rather play KSP, honestly.

I once observed from West Texas at the same site (roughly) as a guy who was doing a bunch of imaging with his Takahashi scopes and high quality CCD cameras. He had like $30000 of equipment. While I was in awe of the incredible naked-eye galactic vista above me, and using my scope to work my way through dark nebulae, brilliant star clusters, and tiny planetary nebulae in the galactic bulge, he was sitting there, 100 yards away behind a small tree, staring at his computer monitor and fiddling with motor drives and guide stars. He wasn't enjoying the night sky; hell, he wasn't even dark adapted! This experience taught me, beyond all doubt, imaging the sky is a totally different hobby than visual observing, and it's one I will never spend my time on.

Don't get me wrong, it's a worthy hobby, but it's just SO different from visual observing. I see a lot of folks who get into astronomy and end up getting the wrong scope (like, a harder-to-use SCT or puny refractor rather than the simple and highly capable Dobsonian) because they think they should want to take pictures; NO you are not obligated to take any pictures at all. It's very common- newbies get into the hobby and buy some scope where half the cost is the motor driven mount so that they can "take pictures"- and then they never do, or take a couple and lose interest once they realize just how hard it is. They often end up regretting their purchase and wishing they had just bought like a 16" Dob for visual observing instead. It's an easy mistake to make- one I almost made myself about 12 years ago. Thank God I came to my senses and bought a big Dob!

And you're also not recording true color. The true color of nebulae is not, in fact, red. Even if you were smack-dab in the middle of the Orion Nebula, it would still appear mostly greenish-white, with maybe just the slightest hint of a red or brown in places. This is because so much green light is produced by the hydrogen beta and oxygen-3 emission lines that it largely drowns out the ability of our eyes to see the red emission from hydrogen alpha, especially considering the human eye is much more sensitive to green than red light (this becomes even more true at low light levels). Ever see a 5 mW green laser pointer compared to a 5 mW red laser pointer?

So yea, I actually consider all those beautiful images that show nebulae as red as "false color". The TRUE color is what we see through the telescope, and it's NOT red!

Edited October 4, 2013 by |Velocity|

[Motokid600]

I was stuck on visual astronomy for a few years. Until one night I decided to take a crappy point and shoot camera and held it up to the eyepiece. I caught the AP bug much like the KSP bug there and then lol. Infact it was that Jupiter video I posted a few pages back. Then I tried Orion and was floored. By just standing as still as I could for a ten second exposure I captured more detail then I've ever scene. And that's what its about. The appeal is seeing what the eye cannot.

There is no"false color" in a raw image. Yes you can apply filters, but that's something I haven't tried. Those colors ARE there its just your eye can't "keep the shutter open" and soak up photons. The brain resets the image rapidly. I forget the statistic, but it can be measured like the exposure of a camera.

If your big into astronomy then you know of dark adaptation. The pupil is essentialy an f-stop. Over the course of 15 minutes your eyes pupil opens up to let more light in. Then its another 15 minutes after that a chemical reaction takes place that even furthers light sensitivity. So again the eye is very closely built like a camera. ( that last part could be compared to the ISO setting. )

Edited October 6, 2013 by Motokid600

[vetrox]

I got a webcam for christmas last year however i only had 3 days of clear sky for months so these are my very first attempts as I was having some issues with the brightness of jupiter!. I only have a manual eq mount as I'm saving for a much better setup so I have to stand there looking at the live view whilst turning the slomo controls by hand.

These are phone shots from my first ever day with a telscope i borrowed from a friends mum and spent about 4 hours in -3 degreesc just watching jupiter and her moons move through the sky. These were takenby holding my phone camera upto the eyepiece.

And these were taken with my orion webcam and 5x (or was i 3x? i havent been out in months ) barlowe lense.

Random moon

Random jupiter

I've seen people get better shots of jupiter with the same camera but i think the focal length of my scope is a bit short. Obv its geared up towards observing so i cant really complain. The first shot of jupiter is a pretty good representation of what it looks like with the human eye i think. When people ask what stuff looks like through a scope i show them that pic and say it looks something like that.

[Extemporary]

I haven't done as much as I would like. All I've really got is a few from a school project several years ago, and a few more from the transit of Venus.

The weather during the transit decided to be somewhat uncooperative, but fortunately it cleared in time. I made a few mosaics that mostly refuse to upload properly, but I managed to get one up.

[-Velocity-]

I was stuck on visual astronomy for a few years. Until one night I decided to take a crappy point and shoot camera and held it up to the eyepiece. I caught the AP bug much like the KSP bug there and then lol. Infact it was that Jupiter video I posted a few pages back. Then I tried Orion and was floored. By just standing as still as I could for a ten second exposure I captured more detail then I've ever scene. And that's what its about. The appeal is seeing what the eye cannot.

There is no"false color" in a raw image. Yes you can apply filters, but that's something I haven't tried. Those colors ARE there its just your eye can't "keep the shutter open" and soak up photons. The brain resets the image rapidly. I forget the statistic, but it can be measured like the exposure of a camera.

If your big into astronomy then you know of dark adaptation. The pupil is essentialy an f-stop. Over the course of 15 minutes your eyes pupil opens up to let more light in. Then its another 15 minutes after that a chemical reaction takes place that even furthers light sensitivity. So again the eye is very closely built like a camera. ( that last part could be compared to the ISO setting. )

It's just a point of view, I guess. To me, real color is what an eye with a fully dilated 7mm pupil would see if the eye was placed very close to the object so that no telescope was needed at all. So I've seen the Orion nebula in "real color", as I've observed it from an effective distance of 15 light years with a 7mm exit pupil (in a 25" scope). It's not red. It's greenish-whitish, with HINTS at other colors. With the eye, the best way I've found to detect the other colors, at least indirectly, is to view the Orion nebula with a nebula filter, and then compare that to the view without a nebula filter. Without the nebula filter, the color is greenish-whitish, with hints of browns in places, and inexplicably, a few blues, perhaps (I think that the blue is an illusion though). Once you pop the nebula filter in though, the Orion nebula turns a very deep turquoise/stoplight color (the color of H-beta + OIII). That PROVES there are significant, other colors there that your eye is detecting, but your eye just has a hard time picking them out due to the overwhelming green color.

Edited October 7, 2013 by |Velocity|