Astrophotography

[Loren Pechtel]

I had a very nice telescope many years ago. Spent a good bit of money on it. I found out i'm not a night owl and you have to be up at night to use it. So I sold it. Stuff like the above makes me wish I could have gotten into it.

It's something that's never interested me. The scenes are always the same, there's no way anything I could find through a scope can match what the pros do, I'll just enjoy looking at what they get.

 

[SLD]

I had a very nice telescope many years ago. Spent a good bit of money on it. I found out i'm not a night owl and you have to be up at night to use it. So I sold it. Stuff like the above makes me wish I could have gotten into it.

It's something that's never interested me. The scenes are always the same, there's no way anything I could find through a scope can match what the pros do, I'll just enjoy looking at what they get.

It’s amazing what the amateurs can do. Check out the pics on Astrobin. They’re almost identical to Hubble pics! But it costs a lot of money though to do that. Me I’m happy with what I’ve done while keeping it fairly cheap (~$6,000).

 

[SLD]

So here’s my Rosette Nebula. Really happy with it!

 

[crazyfingers]

Back before kids I subscrbed to Sky and Telescope and Astronomy Magazine. I have several years of them still on my bed table.

I am thinking of resubscribing to the digital version of one. I read in bed at night on my tablet.

Back then I liked Astronomy a bit more because of it's heavier emphasis on new discoveries and on cosmology compared with S&T which was more focused on telescope techniques and reviews. Though they both had a mix.

Does that describe the two now?

 

[SLD]

Back before kids I subscrbed to Sky and Telescope and Astronomy Magazine. I have several years of them still on my bed table.

I am thinking of resubscribing to the digital version of one. I read in bed at night on my tablet.

Back then I liked Astronomy a bit more because of it's heavier emphasis on new discoveries and on cosmology compared with S&T which was more focused on telescope techniques and reviews. Though they both had a mix.

Does that describe the two now?

Last I checked.

 

[crazyfingers]

I'm getting Astronomy now. I read it mainly on my tablet at bedtime. I wish it wasn't just one big PDF though.

 

[SLD]

Messier 8 and Messier 20, the famous Trifid Nebula. Also IC 4658 at the bottom. This is 1 hour and 12 minutes of data in 180 second subs. Scope is a William Optics GT 71 with a ZWO 2600 MC one shot color camera and a .8 reducer/flattener. Processed in Pixinsight.

 

[SLD]

Messier 24 and 17 in the upper right. When you look down the center of the galaxy, the number of stars is just overwhelming. Messier didn’t realize that’s what he was looking at So he just named it his 24th object, but in reality it’s not really an object, just a huge number of stars in the field of view. I love the dark globules that block a lot of stars.

This is just 36 minutes of data. Same as before, 3 minute subs. I was going to do a full hour but had a meridian flip half way through and it ruined the next few photos so I switched to M8 and M20.

 

[SLD]

The dumbbell nebula. This is heavily cropped. One hour and 15 minutes of data.

 

[SLD]

The eclipse. From rural Arkansas.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

No red? We had lots of red in Akron. Granted, we didn't see it at the same time.

 

[hurtinbuckaroo]

No red? We had lots of red in Akron. Granted, we didn't see it at the same time.

Exposing to record a good image of the corona causes the reddish prominences you saw to be “washed out”. They can be recorded with a separate, shorter exposure, and the two can be combined with some editing techniques.

I had hoped that the solar maximum would cause something like that to be visible to the naked eye. The ones in 2017 were too small. This one was huge, at least three times the diameter of Earth.

 

[Shadowy Man]

This is the best I got from where I live.

 

[crazyfingers]

Amateur max

Eclipse glasses over my phone. And a colander.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

No red? We had lots of red in Akron. Granted, we didn't see it at the same time.

Exposing to record a good image of the corona causes the reddish prominences you saw to be “washed out”. They can be recorded with a separate, shorter exposure, and the two can be combined with some editing techniques.

I had hoped that the solar maximum would cause something like that to be visible to the naked eye. The ones in 2017 were too small. This one was huge, at least three times the diameter of Earth.

It isn't as clear as my bottom shot, but I have the red flare in my main eclipse exposure. In Akron, it was visually very prominent, at the base.

 

[SLD]

No red? We had lots of red in Akron. Granted, we didn't see it at the same time.

Exposing to record a good image of the corona causes the reddish prominences you saw to be “washed out”. They can be recorded with a separate, shorter exposure, and the two can be combined with some editing techniques.

I had hoped that the solar maximum would cause something like that to be visible to the naked eye. The ones in 2017 were too small. This one was huge, at least three times the diameter of Earth.

Indeed. I over exposed it. I shot a bunch at first, then just stopped and enjoyed the show. I could easily see the prominence naked eye. It was marvelous to just look at.