[Showcase] show of your space pictures!!

[RogueMason]

-snip-

It occurs to me that I should really try to get a picture of the Pleiades and Betelgeuse. I can't see the nebulosity of the Pleiades, but even without, they're a beautiful cluster of stars. As for Betelgeuse... IT'S SO YELLOW!

Ok, I have tasks for the next clear night

And I have now completed said tasks

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

Yeah, not the best, but with just a digital camera pointed through an eyepiece by hand, it's decent. The picture certainly gives a sense of just how orange-yellow the supergiant star actually is when viewed through a telescope.

Next up, the Pleiades! Unusually easier to take a picture of than Betelgeuse...:

I can't get the whole cluster into view of my telescope all at once, but I think I did well on this shot

As a bonus, I took quite a few pictures to experiment a little bit, and I actually turned out a decent (for an unaided digital camera) picture of Orion:

The thing to the right is the starfinder on my Celestron; there is a useful little camera mount just behind this, which I used for this shot. Like I say, the picture itself is decent, but without any top-notch photography equipment, this is about the best I'll be getting. A new camera is being dubiously considered...

[Jasel]

RogueMason - Still those are pretty fun shots! Betelgeuse is my second favorite star, and Orion is my personal favorite constellation.

You don't need anything super fancy to get started. Heck a webcam can attach to your telescope with the right mount. If your Celestron has GOTO then you might be able to get away with a few second capture, and stack the results with software.

Higher up CCD's and DSLR's will get you better results, but that means more money. Astrophotography is pretty much one of the most expensive hobbies you can get into!

[Raven.]

I too am currently reduced to holding my digital camera up to the eyepiece of my telescope, but that hasn't stopped me. The only pictures I've taken are of the Moon and Jupiter, and the best two I've managed so far are these:

http://i.imgur.com/Ki9vw5Z.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/csb5zVd.jpg

I've yet to see Saturn and Mars, and Venus taunts me by hiding behind some trees. Unfortunately, I also live in an area with fairly light-polluted skies. I've spotted the Orion Nebula, but it's too dim to take a picture of, which is annoying. Thankfully, the Moon and Jupiter are astoundingly clear through my telescope

...

It occurs to me that I should really try to get a picture of the Pleiades and Betelgeuse. I can't see the nebulosity of the Pleiades, but even without, they're a beautiful cluster of stars. As for Betelgeuse... IT'S SO YELLOW!

Ok, I have tasks for the next clear night

Good picture of Jupiter. My girlfriend and I had Jupiter in the telescope about a month ago, along with its first four moons, but we didn't know how to go about taking a picture.

[Lexif]

I discovered stacking multiple images and some reprocessing methods that can tickle a lot more details out of relatively mundane images.

I had two large image series of Orion back from 2011, and reprocessed them again this january. I took 86 images with my Canon EOS 1000D and a 50mm/1.8 lens on two dates, and a few dozen darkframes. Not exactly in a dark place, but out of the window of my german city appartent. Exposure times are 3.6 and 5 seconds, for a total time of about seven minutes. I stacked them (with DeepSkyStacker) and ran them through a HDR program and did some processing steps with FITSworks and Photoshop CS2. Besides the Orion nebula, you can see the flame nebula and the horsehead nebula.

Here is a single shot without stacking, by the way:

http://i.imgur.com/ufy68Hj.jpg

This year, I tried my ultra wide angle lens on astrophotography. In this picture, you see Jupiter on top competing with Sirius in the lower left corner, and of course Orion is there, too. You can also see several open star clusters in the milky way below Jupiter. At 11 mm and f/4, four pictures with 30 s exposure time (for a total two minutes) were processed in a similar way.

I also managed to get a shot of comet Lovejoy this december. The sky was still quite bright and the moon was up, and as I was standing on the sidewalk of my street, I couldn't even see a single star in this frame. You can just about see Lovejoy's trail above the antenna, and M 13, a globular cluster in Hercules is the blurry spot above and to the right of the middle of the image. 29 images with about 3 s exposure each, 50/1.8 at f/2.8.

PS: The antenna in the photo of Lovejoy is imaged twice (and of blurred) because the shot is a composite of two different series of pictures. I had to wait a few minutes because my neighbours were coming home and their cars lit everything up. I guess they must suspect I'm some kind of pervert, standing on the sidewalk with my camera on a tripod, taking pictures of the sky above my house. Anyway, the blurryness comes from the earth's rotation, as the comet was setting in the west. The stacking program then identified and aligned the stars.

Edited February 21, 2014 by Lexif

[Soda Popinski]

Some tiome ago a friend of mine lended me his 1300mm zoom lens for my DSLR. Those are two of the best shots, I managed to take.

Your friend has a 1300mm zoom lens? The famous discontinued Canon EF 1200 5.6 IS (1200mm fixed lens) costs >$75,000. NASA, Sports Illustrated and only a few others owned one. Who's your friend?

[Lexif]

Your friend has a 1300mm zoom lens? The famous discontinued Canon EF 1200 5.6 IS (1200mm fixed lens) costs >$75,000. NASA, Sports Illustrated and only a few others owned one. Who's your friend?

I guess there's a case of confusion between tele and zoom? I hear people say zoom a lot when they mean tele. And the Plejades shot looks to me like the framing a 135 mm would give on a crop 2 DSLR, so maybe an extra zero made it's way into the post by accident. A 1300 mm could just about fit the Plejades in on a 36 mm sensor DSLR.

PS: Also, a 100-400 mm zoom, a 2x teleconverter and a 1.6 crop DSLR would give you the same frame as a 1300 mm tele on a 36 mm sensor (full frame) DSLR, and you would be able to take that Plejades shot, too, if you ditch the teleconverter. But I guess the resulting effective apperture because of the teleconverter (f/8 for a f/4 telezoom, right?) would make it worthless for astro shots for anything fainter than the moon.

Edited February 22, 2014 by Lexif

[Lordherrmann]

Well I'm just beginning to get into photography. My buddy knows I'm into space, so he gave me this lens. I just put on my camera using an adapter, because it did not have a bayonet, but had to be screwed on. I could probably give you a better description, but it's 2am here, so my Englsh skills aren't exactly smashing at the moment. However I know it's zoom lens ranging from 650mm to 1300mm. I've made a few pictures of it and will try to upload them sometime tomorrow, so you can try and solve this problem and probably teach me some good technical information about photography. Also if it is of any help: I'm using a Canon EOS 600D.

[Lexif]

Ah, thanks Lordhermann. I like your picture of the moon!

So I guess it's one of those 650-1300 mm f/8-f/16 sold under brands like Wallimex or Opteka here in Germany. If you look for a good and cheap lens for astro stuff, I guess this is not the way to go. Astrophotography seems to be unforgiving and demanding. A quick google search seems to show a lot of complaints about colourfull fringes and lack of sharpness for this lens. Astrophotography has hard contrasts and those problems will show up a lot. Sadly, you get what you pay for when it comes to lenses for (D)SLRs.

Also, the aperture (f/8-f/16, depending on the focal length) is just horrific. In general, a smaller number (= larger aperture opening) collects more light in the same time, so you will be able to get more light on the sensor before the time gets too long and the earth's rotation blurs your image. For "normal" photography with such a lens, your exposure times will be very long, and you will very likely be unable to take pictures without a tripod even in bright daylight.

If you want to get somthing "tele" to use in astrophotography and want to go cheap, I would rather buy an old, used 135 mm f/2.8 (larger aperture, smaller aperture number) off ebay, with an M42 adapter to screw it on your camera and experiment a little. Those go for 30-50€. Much longer focal lengths won't get you more stars on your pictures if you don't have a mounting that can correct for the earth's rotation, and a 135 mm lens is still quite usefull for everyday pictures in my opinion.

I personally use the cheapest lens Canon offers, the EF 50/1.8, for my pictures. It's "only" about 100€, and it's got some problems near the edges as you can see in my photos. But it's a real winner for the price, very sharp in the center of the frame. I also find a lot of use for it for nice portraits in low light, where you can use it without the flash unlike the default 18-55 3.5-5.6 because it lets more light in.

PS: It thought about my advice for a 135 mm for astrophotos, and I now think that's neither here nor there -- it won't be able to get you any "interesting" pics of the moon or the planets (I tried on Jupiter and you can see the moons, but no details on the planet), and it's about the longest focal length I would try without any kind of guidance, I think. So if you want to go and get something cheap for your camera, I would try and stick with star field photography with 80 mm or less, that should be rewarding and might teach you a lot. But I don't have much experience myself when it comes to astro photography...

Edited February 22, 2014 by Lexif

[Lordherrmann]

Yes, I looked it up and it was in fact a Wallimex lens. If you look at the moon picture closely you can see some dispersion above and below the moon. I think this tells you something about the lenses quality.

I thought about buying the EF 50/1.8, but wasn't sure yet. Your post suggests though, that you can recommend it.

[Lexif]

The EF 50/1.8 is a flimsy bucket of plastic held together by only two screws, and the focus motor sounds like an electric screwdriver. But the optics are good and it is a lot sharper than the kit lens that comes with the EOS 600D. And it's really lightweight at 100 g and very compact, so I never find an excuse to leave it at home. I really recommend it as a start if you want to try out if you like non-zoom lenses. I replaced my kit lens with a 10-24 mm ultra wide angle zoom and the 50/1.8 for most use cases. I find I rarely use the range between about 28 and 50 mm on my kit lens anyway. (I mostly photograph landscapes.) I also have the EF-S 55-250, which often joins in on hinking trips etc. because it's very lightweight.

[Omicron314]

Here is an image of Jupiter I took last night improved in GIMP and then overlaid onto another photo with the moons visible. The end product is not bad.

It is a little out-of-focus though. Still working on that.

[chickenplucker]

Here are a few shots I took from last year, nothing special. All of them with my trusty Canon T2i/550D.

This is cropped, but used my Tamron "AF 70-300mm f/4.0-5.6 SP Di VC USD XLD" The name of that goofy thing is almost as long as its focal range.

The light pollution coming off the horizon is from Lansing, dang city always tries to ruin the sky's. This was shot with an old Yashica mount Osawa MC 28mm/2.8 I had laying around from my 35mm film days. You can track that lens down pretty cheap on Ebay, grab the appropriate adapter for you camera, and then have a pretty decent wide angle lens for about 30 or so bucks. It does a pretty decent job.

Orion over the house on Christmas Eve, seen it when heading out for work and had to snap a picture. I think this was with a cheap manual Soligar 19-35mm I picked up to play with.

Just a wide field shot of our neighbors. This was a stack of 7 images I think, maybe one dark and light thrown in there too. Same Osawa 28mm lens as above.

And here is a short time lapse I threw together over 2hrs just to watch some stars fly by but ended up catching a lot of planes zipping around.

[Lexif]

Omicron, great picture of Jupiter!

I caught the new moon setting yesterday evening.

(EF-S 55-250 mm 1:4-5,6 IS @ 250 mm, cropped 50%)

(EF-S 55-250 mm 1:4-5,6 IS @ 145 mm)

The light pollution coming off the horizon is from Lansing, dang city always tries to ruin the sky's. This was shot with an old Yashica mount Osawa MC 28mm/2.8 I had laying around from my 35mm film days. You can track that lens down pretty cheap on Ebay, grab the appropriate adapter for you camera, and then have a pretty decent wide angle lens for about 30 or so bucks. It does a pretty decent job.

Nice pictures, chickenplucker. Is this the 28/2.8 you got?

http://www.pentaxforums.com/userreviews/osawa-28mm-f2-8-m42.html

I think I've got a relative of that lens, branded Exakta. It looks very similar, but the font is green instead of yellow, and my lens is dubbed Macro now and focusses to 20 cm instead of 30.

[Javster]

Moob shots?? No thanks!

Seriously though, I have a telescope but have not looked at the Moon yet.

[Moon Goddess]

You all make me so jealous, all my pictures of the sky (and everything else) are taken on a cell phone.

[chickenplucker]

@Lexif

Nice crescents! Yupper, that's the same lens. The Exakta version sounds pretty interesting, I ended up getting some extension tubes trying to make mine a macro but that one sounds much more useful

@Moon Goddess

You can take some amazing shots with any camera if you experiment enough Find an app that lets you manually control/set an exposure time, set it for around 7-15 secs (Any longer makes star trails). Make sure your phone can't wobble or move, then hold a piece of paper over the camera lens to block it. Hit the shutter button, wait for the phone to stop wobbling then pull the paper away. The paper will keep your picture from blurring when you push the button, or you can use a self timer so when you push the button and set the phone down it will stop wobbling when it takes the picture. For moon shots if you hold a set of binoculars in front of the phone it can sometimes help get you closer. It may not be as sharp as a DSLR, but you can still do quite a bit if you experiment enough

[chickenplucker]

Thread needs more Space!!!

From tonight, it was nice and warm out so I was messing around with an old 1958 Dynascope Rv-6 that I picked up as my first "real" telescope (sorry little C-90) which is mounted to a Celestron VX.

Since there was a bright little dot by the moon that looked familiar, slewed over a bit and... Jupiter and its moons! Could not be happier with the Rv-6, the pictures have a hard time showing how sharp that scope is. And to be fair this picture is a composite of two images, its a royal pain trying to get the moons and any banding details to show up in one shot on a DSLR.

Edited March 11, 2014 by chickenplucker

[XIRA]

I captured this one a couple of weeks ago:

[R4inator]

Long ago, I saw Saturn and its rings but I have no pictures ;(

[Lexif]

R4inator, doesn't matter in my opinion. Seeing Saturn's rings kind of hang there in the void of space through a telescope is one of the most magical things I ever saw, except for that total eclipse, maybe... It really can't be captured in a picture in my opinion.

XIRA, that's a nice picture. I really like the atmosphere it conveys with the chimney etc...

Chickenplucker, great pictures, especially that shot of Jupiter! Funny, on the same evening, I saw the moon and Jupiter quite close together and thought I might try and capture Jupiter's moons and our Moon in the same shot. There was more haze that what I could see with the naked eye... Also, I couldn't resolve Io and Callisto.

I don't know if you can see the moons in the small resolution...click on the picture for the full resolution. (100 mm, f/6,3, 1 s, ISO 800)

I also got quite a nice shot of the moon at 250 mm (100% crop).

Edited March 11, 2014 by Lexif

[vetrox]

Thread Bump.

These are all from Xmas 2012 (wow was it really that long ago...I need to get the telescope out more!) When I got an Orion Solar system imager thingy I still dont have all the equipment I need Plus trying to image saturn shows the limits of my telescope/lense collection. I could also do with a motor drive. These were taken by using the hand controls to keep stuff in focus.

The moon.

Potato [these are two seperate images. If i dont put this message here they look like one really badly put together image]

And my first attempt at jupiter [cropped] (still getting to grips with the software and stacking etc)

And an attempt a couple weeks later I think.

Unfortunatley my laptop died late last year so I cant actually hook up the camera any more

EDIT: And the obligatory "iphone camera through the eyepiece" picture of jupiter and 2 moons

Edited April 9, 2014 by vetrox

[vger]

The moon and the sun, both taken in Summer 2012.

[RogueMason]

I've been completely blindsided over where I live; I haven't seen a clear night for about two and a half weeks now! I've got a camera mount that I want to try out, too. Lousy British weather...

[Dodgey]

Hey RogueMason I'm with you, we got a storm coming here in North Queensland so I'm looking at blank skys as well. So much for sunny Australia!

[Jasel]

Here's my latest moon taken on 2014.02.13. Some kind of stacking issue happened on the right side, but other than that it seemed to turn out OK.

I've been trying for Mars but it's a bear to find through the camera without GOTO.