[Showcase] show of your space pictures!!

[Sun]

Took my first image of Saturn through my telescope last night.

[Camacha]

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

Definitive proof the Moon is made of cheese - mice are even nibbling on it!

Edited September 2, 2014 by Camacha

[Lexif]

Took my first image of Saturn through my telescope last night.

Congratulations! Zooming in, it kind of makes you understand how Galileo first reported that Saturn has two moons, one on each side.

[cantab]

Sweet. It's small but you've got the rings there alright.

[Sun]

And I have now completed said tasks

First up, the annoying-to-photograph-through-a-telescope Betelgeuse:

http://i.imgur.com/PAIC6RO.jpg

I think I see 3 dots by Betelgeuse.... possible exoplanets? probably not...

[Astronut]

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.

Glad you like them . I wish I could give you an answer regarding the brightness of Discovery's belly vs the ISS. I also interpret the image to show the belly, which you would think would be darker.

For the Mars shot and the ISS, the scope I used was my trusty 10 inch Meade LX200 SCT. The Ha Solar image was taken through a Solarmax SM60 Solar telescope. The nebulae shots were through an 80mm refractor mounted on the LX200. I used various cameras ranging from a simple webcam (including the ISS/Discovery image), to a dedicated CCD camera for the deep space shots.

I don't think there is such a thing as a winner on this thread. All the images show the best efforts of everyone with the equipment they have available. Thats all that counts IMHO.

[Aethon]

Well done all. Neat thread.

[RogueMason]

I think I see 3 dots by Betelgeuse.... possible exoplanets? probably not...

Ha, if only

That picture of Betelgeuse is pretty awful, just enough to get the yellow colour across, really. Any dots that are visible are either interference or blurring of the star, and seeing as imaging exoplanets directly requires something to block the light of the parent star and a very high grade telescope/camera combination...

Yeah, I don't think we got anything in that shot

[Flymetothemun]

I walked out tonight and saw that the skies were clear. Having bought a pair of binoculars to see space with, I got them out. The Half-Moon was the only thing worth seeing (Binos not too powerful, 10x50's), and boy was there some neat things to see. I only viewed it when it was full, but I was surprised to see the peaks of the mountain ranges; they jumped out at me like nothing other. I thought "Hmmm... Maybe I could try to take some pictures".

I got my digital camera, a 12 Megapixel point-and-shoot that really didn't have any business doing any sort of astrophotography, and proceeded to make a setup. I rolled up one of the eyecups on the bincos to make it easier for the camera to butt up against the eyepiece, and then carefully balanced the binos on the edge of a 5*5 inch post so that the Moon was somewhere in the view. I tried to take pictures using just the camera, but my hands were too shaky to even get close to getting a decent picture without ruining the balance of the binos. Not owning a full-sized tripod, I proceeded to get an old neck lanyard meant for ID badges. I then clipped it into the camera's wriststrap hole. I pulled the lanyard taut to make it harder for my hands to shake and then positioned my body so that the camera would look into the eyepiece. It worked for stabilization in the past, but it wasn't good enough for astrophotos. The picture got better, but it was still too uncontrollable to take a good picture. I then proceeded to find an old miniature tripod meant for tabletop shooting, and holding it's folded legs in my hand while at the same time stretching the lanyard to a medium tightness, but not too tight. Success! I had finally gotten control! I finally got some well-framed shots, but they weren't the best quality. I fiddled around with some settings and got the best quality I could, and then I proceeded to take some shots.

When I got them back to the computer, they didn't look too great. But, y'know what? They seemed pretty good. I didn't really mind the low-quality. Nor did I get my blood pressure up over the Moon not being exactly in the centre. I didn't mind the blurry appearance, either. I honestly thought that the shots looked better because of the blur. That's when I realized that I finally learned to love the blur.

[Vanamonde]

Consolidated into the existing space pictures thread.

[RogueMason]

Agh, September was the last post here? This thread needs reviving. Thankfully, I have just the thing

I had a pretty good opportunity handed to me a couple of weeks ago; I was on a week-long field course with uni (geological fieldwork that surprisingly did not include rain but was actually sunny...) that took us down to Pembrokeshire, South Wales. Now, I live right next to Liverpool, so the light pollution up here is abysmal. Pembrokeshire, on the other hand, was a lot darker. While it doesn't have spectacularly dark skies, it was still a lot better than what I'm used to. Even a casual gaze upwards revealed a lot more stars than I normally see, which was very nice

The best bit about all this, though? I've got myself a new DSLR to play with (a Nikon D3200)

There were only two nights that were clear, but I used 'em both. The first night, I started on 5 second exposures and the highest ISO (higher than 6400 on my camera, just labelled 'Hi 1'), and I just missed out on a total picture of Orion as it started retreating behind a cabin:

Still, it's not bad. The Moon was interfering quite a bit with its light, but I managed. Also, I apologise, some of these pictures are a little shaky; I only had a mini tripod with me (still only have that) that would need holding down sometimes so the whole thing didn't topple over, and I hadn't found the 10 second countdown function until a couple of pictures later.

I took a couple more pictures, but they weren't so good, so at this point, I switched to 10 second exposures:

I wasn't able to figure out what the loose cluster of stars was to the left in this picture (I should probably look it up...):

Jupiter, with Praesepe (the Beehive Cluster) obscured behind the tree branch just above the planet. This picture marks the first time I've actually seen the cluster in some way of my own, which is cool:

Cassiopeia:

A bit to the left of the above image. The Pleaides made it into this one... just...

...so naturally I took a picture of that, as well. This one's a bit cloudy and Moon-lit, but hey:

A couple of nights later, and I had another clear night, though it was dusk. Orion was still up, so I took the chance. I lowered the ISO to 6400, set the 10 second countdown, and...

...I'm pretty happy with this one. Like I said, it was dusk so it was still quite light, hence my turning the ISO down. I'll actually keep the ISO lower in future shots just to keep the noise down, but for a first run of somewhat more advanced astrophotography, I'm extremely pleased with the results.

The one thing that's astounded me about all this is how many stars even a 10 second exposure can pick out... heck, even how many a 3 second exposure can pick out!

Since the trip, I've got myself a 55-200mm VR lens that works very well, but without dark skies, I haven't had any chances to test it with the night sky. The Moon should be in a good position in a week or so, so maybe I'll get a chance to try then.

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

Why are there no pictures of other planets? Only Dres...

[michaelsteele3]

Brace Yourselves.

You gotta know just the right thing to search

(Sorry if it slowed some browsers down, if it did I'll fix it)

(FOR THE BEST EXPERIENCE, RIGHT CLICK THE IMAGES AND CLICK "Open in New Tab"

[XIRA]

Captured this one back in December.

There is a lot of noise because the settings where kinda wrong, but I still think that it's a great shot!

This is the raw image too. I should probably try to enhance it in photoshop one day.

(The picture was taken in Morocco, at the border of the Sahara desert for those who are wondering)

[UmbralRaptor]

A pair of Moon images from November 2009 with a Canon PowerShot SD 1100 IS:

The night one was possible in part due to CHDK letting me mess with the exposure time manually (ISO 80, 1/320 s). It was cool figuring out how to get the exposure and focus right, but with an angular scale of ~20"/pixel at max zoom, detail is impossible.

(The realization of how much $$$ I would need to spend to get decent images killed my interest in astrophotography)

michaelsteele3: Photos, not photoshops.

Edited April 22, 2015 by UmbralRaptor