[Showcase] show of your space pictures!!

[Javster]

Does anyone know how to stop the shaking with my telescope?

[Starwhip]

Does anyone know how to stop the shaking with my telescope?

You have problems with shaking? My telescope hardly can stand still while I'm holding it. It's an old Tasco, and if you were to let the eyepiece go, it would immediately decide to point the other end toward Earth, as the hinge has no lock anymore. The darn thing is so loose and old, the best I've been able to see is a dot with a few other dots as Jupiter. (Which was still pretty cool.)

I need a new telescope....

[Lexif]

Does anyone know how to stop the shaking with my telescope?

Can you post a picture of it? Kind of hard to give any advice without knowing your scope.

[RogueMason]

I caught my first snapshot of minor planets yesterday. (1) Ceres and (4) Vesta are visible pretty close to Mars now.

-snip-

50mm, f/2.2, ISO 800, 21x4 seconds, click to enlarge.

Not exactly a very exciting image, but still kind of cool, I think. (Sadly, I kind of overexposed Mars, so its signature color doesn't come out.) Vesta is currently just bright enough to be seen with the naked eye under a very dark sky.

Nice picture. If only I had skies like that where I live. My dad has said we'll go out to Denbigh Moors with my telescope at some point, because it's apparently bl**dy dark out there. I agree with the fact that it is probably bl**dy dark out there:

Also, I haven't had the best opportunities arise for me to test out my camera mount. I have used it, but the pictures were not the best I could manage. To be fair, Jupiter is a bit hard to photograph, and the Moon was completely full and revealed little detail that would arise from the shadows produced by mountains and craters.

On another note, I have now gazed upon both Mars and Saturn. Mars was pretty cool; a little red disc through my 6mm plossl, but no details that I could make out. Saturn, on the other hand was just... wow. Incredible. Despite the wind shaking my telescope a bit and the fact that the planet was low above the horizon, I saw the rings perfectly. I eagerly await the next chance I get to take a look at it.

Maybe I'll get some pictures then

[kookoo_gr]

the final image of m106 that i finished this year

full resolution http://www.astrobin.com/full/72457/B/

[vger]

Does anyone know how to stop the shaking with my telescope?

Does it have a tracking motor?

the final image of m106 that i finished this year

O_O ...whoa. That's beautiful!

[Nfeld The Rocketeer]

Just got my Celestron COSMOS 60mm telescope. I'll see if I can get some pics.

[Lexif]

Nice picture. If only I had skies like that where I live.

Thanks! Don't give up, my skies are also not very dark, and the night I took that picture was far from clear. Maybe mag 3 visually. I live in a city of about 115000 people, but there's not much around it. But that night was quite hazy. Here's one of the single 4 s exposures of which I stacked 21 to make that picture. Converted straight from the RAW file without edits (50% size, though), couldn't see most of those stars visually.

http://i.imgur.com/XKrxyZQ.jpg

Ceres and Vesta are still well visible.

kookoo_gr, that picture of M106 ist just amazing. Thinking back to the early nineties, when digital photography and the internet were in it's infancy, I got all astronomy books I could get from the public library, and the best deep sky pictures in them were not nearly as good. And they were taken from Mount Palomar with a 5 m mirror on photographic plates, stuff no amateur could dream of... It's just amazing what is possible today.

With regard to shaking scopes, I think one problem is that a lot of amateur scopes have bad mountings and weak tripods. They are built to a price point, and the money goes into the dimensions of the optics, which will be the selling point. When I got my 8 inch Newton mirror, I talked to some guys from the local amateur astronomers club about wether I should invest into a better mounting, and they told me to go with a more solid tripod first. They said that a telescope should be built from the ground up, and I got a strong wooden tripod made for geodesy that made a lot of a difference. Maybe you can see if you can exchange some parts, I've had a cheap scope where the main screws were compatible with photographic tripod shoes.

Also, if your scope tips over, it's not balanced. Maybe you can move the bellows that hold the tubus to balance it out? (If it has bellows.) That might help.

Edit: If your tripod has telescoping legs, you could try and retract them a segment or two from the bottom up. That will increase stability.

[kookoo_gr]

A new photo of IC1396 aka the Elephant trunk nebula

full resolution http://www.astrobin.com/full/95385/0/

[kookoo_gr]

A moon mosaic from May 7th 2014, pick a place for Jeb to land

full resolution http://www.astrobin.com/full/95392/0/

[PakledHostage]

I know that I am reviving a bit of an old thread, but there is some great work in here and I doubt anyone will mind.

This is my own latest attempt at photographing the night sky. The frames in the time lapse video were shot over four hours in Canyonlands National Park in Utah. I wish I had more frames to work with so I could make a longer video, but the batteries in the camera ran out of power.

[Lexif]

Nice video, PakledHostage! My time was well wasted, thanks. I assume those streaks are planes and not meteors? I have to try something like that some time.

And kookoo_gr, your pictures rock so hard, they are a great inspiration.

[PakledHostage]

Nice video, PakledHostage! My time was well wasted, thanks. I assume those streaks are planes and not meteors? I have to try something like that some time.

Thanks! Yes, the streaks were airplanes. I shot the video in Canyonlands National Park near Moab, UT. The planes were heading to/from the general direction of LA and Vegas. That probably explains why there were so many of them.

Each frame in the video was a 30 second exposure. I shot about 330 frames and compiled them to play back at 15 FPS. 30FPS is more standard for video but everything seemed to move too fast at that rate so I slowed it down to 1/2 speed. I quit shooting at 330 frames because the battery in my camera ran out. I had another battery but I wouldn't have been able to change it without moving the camera so I didn't bother. Instead, I used the second battery to get some still shots of the milky way, etc. If I go down to the desert again, I'll have to get a higher mAh battery grip for my camera so that I can let it run longer. I'd also change some settings in the camera and maybe point it at a more interesting part of the sky... Live and learn.

For anyone who hasn't been there, Canyonlands National Park in Utah is a great place for star gazing! If you ever go, bring a camera and tripod. Better yet, bring a telescope.

Edited June 4, 2014 by PakledHostage

[kookoo_gr]

Saturn at 13/6/2014

http://www.astrobin.com/101859/B/

[RogueMason]

Well, here's another shot of the Moon:

However, this is about as good as it's going to get for me at the moment. I discovered that, upon trying to photograph the cloud belts of Jupiter as well as get a picture of Saturn, my camera over-exposes everything to the point that Jupiter remains a featureless disc and Saturn is a smudge.

Oh well, at least I can admire the planets I tried to take pictures of

[BadRocketsCo.]

And I am just sitting here, after it took god knows what time to find moon with a telescope. Finally got the picture, though. Do you guys have any tips for me to find stuff better in the night sky?

[Lexif]

That Saturn pic is great, kookoo_gr!

However, this is about as good as it's going to get for me at the moment. I discovered that, upon trying to photograph the cloud belts of Jupiter as well as get a picture of Saturn, my camera over-exposes everything to the point that Jupiter remains a featureless disc and Saturn is a smudge.

Are you sure you can't take control of the exposure with your camera?

And I am just sitting here, after it took god knows what time to find moon with a telescope. Finally got the picture, though. Do you guys have any tips for me to find stuff better in the night sky?

What's your setup, do you have a finder scope? You could try to add some kind of sight without magnification to your telescope, like aiming markings or a paper tube. Also, practice.

[[email protected]]

This really makes me miss living in western Montana. The view from the tops of the mountains at night was incredible. Especially in winter with the Aurora.

[RogueMason]

Are you sure you can't take control of the exposure with your camera?

Alas, to my great disappointment, even on the lowest exposure settings it over-exposes the planets. Jupiter remains a featureless disc and Saturn remains a cigar-tube-shaped smudge. It's unfortunate, really

[Lexif]

I caught Saturn in a close conjunction with the Moon last evening as they both set behind a chimney.

Canon 1000D (APS-C), 250 mm f/7.1, 1/10 s, ISO 400, full res crop from 10 MP

Too bad I didn't have my 8 inch f/4 newton with me, at 250 mm you can barely make out the rings...Saturn is only 7 or 8 pixels wide. But better than nothing.

I think this was an occulation for parts of Africa, and I might get to see one on 25.10., too, if the autumn weather doesn't interfere...

[Elthy]

Awesome picture! Its very impressive to see saturns size related to the moon, its very large for the distance...

[Astronut]

A few of mine:

Mars, taken back in May:

M27 - The Dumbell Nebula.

The Moon:

The Sun:

M20 - The Triffid Nebula:

The ISS:

Work has kept me away from astroimaging for a while, but I am getting back into it again now .

Edited September 2, 2014 by Astronut

[Lexif]

Astronut, haha, way to win this thread! These are all great, I especially dig the Mars picture and of course the ISS collage. Care to share some details on the optics used? What piques my curiosity is how the shuttle's belly (that's what we see, right?) seems quite bright compared to the station.

Awesome picture! Its very impressive to see saturns size related to the moon, its very large for the distance...

Thanks. Yes, it's quite the eyeopener that Saturn is so large absolutely and as seen from here. Basically about the same diameter as the theoretical limit of resolution of the human eye (0.5 arc minutes or something like that). Also, Jupiter and it's moons --- kind of strange to think about how the gallilean moons should almost be visible to the naked eye if it were not for the large contrast. Just imagine distances were a bit more in favour, and how that would have changed the whole history of our understanding of the world.

Edited September 1, 2014 by Lexif
typo

[RogueMason]

Yep, Astronut has indeed won. That Mars picture is brilliant, and I can't believe you managed to get all those photos of the ISS, including one with Discovery. Nice job!

[Sun]

This image was taken during a triple conjunction between Saturn, Mars, and the Moon:

See it? That's Saturn through my telescope! I can't believe I managed this last night! You need to zoom in on the image, but that's Saturn! So much hype in my legs!

Post your astronomical firsts below, e.g. your first telescope, or your first rocket launch, or something!