A couple of astronomy images I took last night.

[Astronut]

Thought I would share a couple of images I took last night using my new imaging setup (Celestron CGEM-DX mount with an Astrotech AT6RC scope).

NGC 7331 in Pegasus. This galaxy is estimated to be 49 Million Light Years distant and is about the size of our own Milky Way galaxy.

My deep space imaging was cut short with the arrival of the Moon, so I created a mosaic of 4 shots. Photoshop did a nice job of stitching them together for me .

[sal_vager]

Brilliant shot of the moon there, well done

[Astronut]

Glad you like it . Ironically, the moon shot took just a few minutes to put together while the galaxy image took a couple of hours. Moon images are always impressive though as you can capture a lot of fine detail with very short exposures.

[Free Trader Beowulf]

Yeah, both are very nice. I've had a go atthe moon in the past with an SLR and a 500mm lens but it's not the same :-)

[Cooly568]

Lucky! I've always wanted a telescope, Really cool images!

[BostLabs]

Wow! And I thought my telescope was great when I was a kid. That thing came no where close to your images. Fantastic!

[jamieadd]

Thats actually a great shot. I might use that as by desktop background

[segaprophet]

Man . . I want a really fancy telescope . .

[RogueMason]

Ok, firstly, those are fantastic images.

Secondly, I see a few of you saying you want a telescope. Look at Celestron's Astromaster range, which are high quality telescopes for reasonable prices. I've got the 130-EQ MD, which is a reflector and it produces fantastically clear images. Unfortunately, all I've been able to look at thus far is the Moon because of the amount of light pollution around, and the fact that Saturn had just gone below the horizon

Oh well, I'll get something more eventually

[Tw1]

Very cool images. I can imagine landing on that Moon...

[Sid]

Great images. Here's one of mine from a few months ago. I use an old Sony DSC2 interchangeable lens digicam piggybacked on a pretty crappy Meade ETX-70. Nowhere near as nice as your setup or results - plus I'm still learning...

Orion Nebula :-

[RickRastardly]

its mind blowing to think when the light left that galaxy on its journey to earth man hadn't even evolved. I love photos of other galaxies.

[Astronut]

Sid, I started out with an ETX70 too. Nice little scope with excellent optics for the pricepoint. That is a very nice image of M42 !

Rickrastedly, it is indeed mind blowing when you think about the distances involved. Some of the background galaxies n that image are about 200 million light years distant.

[Omicron314]

These are very nice images! My family has been thinking about pooling together our money to buy a nice telescope to photograph the planets (I really want to see Neptune in person!) but we haven't quite decided on one. Maybe showing them these pictures will help speed along the decision.

And I am currently up at 2:30 AM because I am waiting for Jupiter to rise. It will be right next to the Moon, at least where I am.

[Sid]

Thanks - I have been astronomising ( hey, I invented a new word ) for a long, long time but always lived in very heavily light polluted areas until we moved to rural Spain a couple of years ago. That's when I bought the ETX for wide field views, having concentrated on the moon and planets before with a 5" F10 refractor.

The dark skies are amazing, but there is never a free lunch of course and the ambient temperatures during the summer months make it difficult to use the Sony DSC for anything except very short exposures. The sensor just gets overwhelmed by thermal noise.

I still have the 5" refractor and I am going to build a better mount for it eventually. I have a Logitech 4000 webcam that I modified for planetary imaging and I would love to start doing that again.

Clear Skies

[lajoswinkler]

Great images, well done.

I see lots of you want a telescope, encouraged by these images, but you can forget about seeing details outside our solar system. Most people who buy telescopes ad hoc seem to be really disappointed with what they see through the eyepiece. They expect spectacular images of nebulas, galaxies because that's what they see int he media.

You can't see that. Machines can, through their superior abilities to take long exposure shots, selective filtering, etc.

Nebulas actually looks rather boring, and most of them are so dim there's no way a human eye could see their beauty, no matter the distance.

Most of the time, telescopes can give you images of blobs instead of points of light. Even with the planets. For example, when watching Mars, this can be called a great success.

Most of the time the atmosphere is so turbulent you can't see any details.

One more example.

Even with a quite expensive telescope with large opening (8'' or more), this is impossible to see. They're too bright in this photo because a camera took it. Human eye would see a lot dimmer blob and the colors would be very faint because our eyes can't see colors in low light conditions.

Planets are far away, their angular sizes are very small. If you're really into astronomy, you'll enjoy even if you look at a gray blob and realize it's a whole world floating far away.

If you're hunting for spectacular images, save yourself from trouble and use the money to buy something else.

[Sid]

lajoswinkler - I agree about deep space objects. Viewed 'live' you won't see any colour or structure and may even need to use averted vision to see them at all. But the nearer planets and the moon are well worth seeing through an eyepiece and wide angle views of starfields too. With good optics it is surprising what you can see - my 5" refractor shows multiple cloud bands on Jupiter for instance.

A cheap webcam ( Phillips Toucam Pro is a favourite, I used a Logitech 4000 ) can capture some amazing planetary and lunar images, in fact it's what many of the best amateur imaging guys use. You don't take one image, but a video ( or videos ) and then use processing software to pick out the frames least affected by atmospheric turbulence and then combine them to increase the signal to noise ratio. The software is free and fairly easy to use. In fact the whole process can't be too hard if I was able do it

The results won't rival the Hubble, and with a budget scope they won't come up to anything like the standard of the dedicated amateurs, but it can be very satisfying.

[astropapi1]

Lovely shot of the moon.

[lajoswinkler]

People are kind of spoiled by the media so they expect to see this.

One of the worst disappointments comes for people who look at Venus.

They expect this:

But you can consider yourself lucky if you see this:

When media talks about Venus, they use false color images. Venus does not have almost any discernible details. It looks like a very bright, white (with a barely discernible coffee tint) gas giant. Very boring.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ugordan/3447783055/

I've witnessed the sighs and huge dissapointment from people on several occasions. Most of them immediately say: "This is stupid, I'm outta here."

I think astronomers should be more careful when releasing photos into the public. If they release false colour images, at least they should inform people of doing so.

[Moon Goddess]

Thing I'd really like to look at if i had a telescope isn't that far away at all. I wanna look at ISS. But I suspect I'd need a tracking system.

[lajoswinkler]

ISS's angular diameter is so small you need lots of magnification, but then your field of view drops. You might barely catch a glimpse of its shape through strong binocular magnification or a telescope because it's just too fast.

Consider this photo, and consider its speed.

Tracking system is a must.

The higher in the sky ISS is, the larger it appears, but also faster.

This video was made with Moon low in the sky, so it took 4 seconds for the transit.

Edited August 31, 2013 by lajoswinkler

[Sid]

A great way to view and\or image the ISS would be to buy a milsurplus anti-aircraft gun mount - the powered kind - and mount a telescope where the gun used to be. That's how rockets were tracked back in the day...

I'm not claiming it would be cheap or very practical though

[Rjhere]

How long exposure was the ngc 7331 picture?

I just bought a 90mm Sky-Watcher Evostar this Thursday, though i have only been able to correct the finder scope and tested the optics (i could easily read stuff through peoples windows... And no, i'm not stalking anyone...). I cant wait to get some views Though Saturn just went below the horizon, but M31 is up during the night!

[Astronut]

Rjhere, the NGC7331 image is composed of 20 x 3 minute exposures, which are 'stacked' to reduce noise.

Here is M27, The Dumbell Nebula from last night. This time I was able to get some colour data. 30 x 3 minute exposures for Luminance and then 10 x 3 minutes each for red, green and blue. All combined in Photoshop.

[hotmailcompany52]

Woah, a lot of really decent pics, I wish I have a set up like some of you do. D: