GolfGTIforum.co.uk
General => General discussion => Topic started by: Adrena1in on 24 March 2013, 11:29
-
Hi all, anyone here into astrophotography at all? Taking pictures of the stars and planets and galaxies and other celestial objects, in case you're wondering.
I've never been any good at regular photography, (much as I'd like to be), but astrophotography is a little easier I've found. You don't necessarily need a good eye for taking a good photo...the objects are up there, all the time...you just need clear skies really.
-
Light pollution may well be the biggest problem would love to have a go at some point.
-
I'd assume you need a decent telescope too with a camera mount for attaching an SLR?
-
is simple in the respect that they are always there but it can get complex, firstly for decent shots you will need; motorized equatorial mount, image stacking software ie deep sky stacker, clear skies with little light pollution, telescope with appropriate mount and an intervalometer if not in built in your cam.
-
This is something I love to look at, especially those shots that have the Milky Way behind a building or something!
-
Light pollution can be a major p.i.t.a. in most places, but a lot of it can be factored out with special lenses and post-processing of the images. I get a fair bit of pollution where I live, so used to travel to the New Forest for stargazing evenings.
You don't necessarily need expensive kit either. Sure, if you want to take photos of galaxies or nebulae, which require many many minutes or even hours of exposure time, then a tracking mount is required to enable the camera to track the subject as it drifts across the sky. But I've had a few acceptable results without.
-
Oh well the brown outs are coming, some days I would like a power cut in the garden for a couple of hours.
-
The stars was amazing in Australia! Up in the hills :cool:
-
One day I'll go where there's no light pollution at all. One day.
-
It's not far from you - South West coast of the IOW should give you the lowest light pollution pretty much anywhere in the UK.
-
Show us the pics you have taken. Havent taken any for a few years, but these are what i took with my 12inch Newtonian (76 inch focal), found it very hard to get a good focus due to the movement (these were taken without the tracking motor in operation)
(http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d120/jmallows/DSCF7086.jpg)
(http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d120/jmallows/DSC05721.jpg)
(http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d120/jmallows/8e78ec88.jpg)
(http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d120/jmallows/b2d6419d.jpg)
(http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d120/jmallows/3c7dcc1e.jpg)
-
Love that last one :cool:
-
What would be a good lens to use for this in a canon ef-efs mount?, i feel like treating myself.
-
Love that last one :cool:
Same, its amazing to see it for real in the eyepiece, much better than the camera! It doesnt look real!
-
Saturn was always my favourite through the eyepiece, but I never managed a decent photo really. The time I had an 11" Celestron SCT, (f/10), which was fabulous, Saturn's rings were exactly side-on to us, so it didn't make for good viewing or photos.
Here are a few of my old shots.
First decent moon pic taken through a 1200mm f/9 cheap Refractor.
(http://i47.tinypic.com/2q9xa2v.jpg)
Can't remember which scope this was...might've been the Celestron C11.
(http://i45.tinypic.com/358rw20.jpg)
My best attempt at M42, the Orion Nebula. 6 minutes of exposure through a 600mm f/6 cheap Refractor.
(http://i50.tinypic.com/2zta6c4.jpg)
400mm cheap Refractor telescope, M31 Andromeda Galaxy. Moon is just there to show how big M31 appears in the sky, which never ceases to amaze me!
(http://i50.tinypic.com/sers76.jpg)
The Red Planet.
(http://i46.tinypic.com/aad37l.jpg)
My 2nd favourite Planet.
(http://i49.tinypic.com/2vcsxtx.jpg)
And finally just some star trails.
(http://i45.tinypic.com/ra8210.jpg)
-
What would be a good lens to use for this in a canon ef-efs mount?, i feel like treating myself.
Depends what you want to shoot really. What's your biggest lens at the moment? Because if you take the moon for example, you need about a 1400mm lens in order to magnify it enough for it to fill the frame. My second moon photo above was taken through a 3000mm lens. Unfortunately, objects which you can photo by hand, (i.e. a single, relatively short exposure), are miniscule.
Other things though, like Deep Sky Objects, (nebulae, galaxies, etc), can be relatively large, and can be photographed with a smaller lens. But you need long exposures, and therefore you need your camera mounted on a device that will rotate slowly to counteract the spin of the earth, (and therefore keep the target object in the same place on the sensor). These tracking mounts can be expensive.
-
Blimey..biggest i have is 300mm although i do have access to a telescope that could take a camera mount.
-
Blimey..biggest i have is 300mm although i do have access to a telescope that could take a camera mount.
Cool, give it a try. My photo of the M31 Galaxy, with a same-size representation of the moon in the corner...that was taken with a 400mm telescope, (not a 600mm like I originally thought). Original image would've been 12Mb, so something like 4272x2848 pixels. At 400mm you can see how the moon doesn't take up much of the frame. Chuck on a 2x or 3x teleconverter to your 300mm lens and you should be able to get some half decent shots.
-
ever tried anything like these lenses? http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1600mm-Samyang-Mirror-Lens-for-Nikon-D100-D80-D40-D70-D50-D90-D4-D800-D800E-/261184982809?pt=UK_Lenses_Filters_Lenses&hash=item3ccfd68f19
-
So all you really need is a big lense?! I'm very intrested!
-
I'm also quite keen on this. My girlfriend bought me a telescope for my birthday, and I can buy an adaptor for attaching my Sony A200. Need to give this a go when I can get out of Manchester and actually see something!
-
I've allways wanted a telescope! But I'd want a decent one and there not cheap :whistle:
Living so close to the South Downs iv got the perfect place!
-
I've never tried one of those mirror camera lenses myself, but been interested to. You'd still only really be able to shoot the moon with it, and perhaps one of the bigger planets...maybe a bright comet or two.
Bobbarley, what telescope did your girlfriend buy you?
Toby, I started with two telescopes and a mount, some eyepieces and stuff, and it came to under £1000 for a complete setup. It was considered cheap!! Certainly for astrophotography anyway. I've had telescopes as big as me which were a couple of hundred, but which I couldn't take pictures through.
Newtonian and Dobsonian Reflector telescopes you can't generally use for photography...not with a DSLR. Refractors and Compound Reflectors though, you can. Mostly.
-
I got this one.
http://www.scopesnskies.com/prod/stargazing/skywatcher/starter-scopeevostar90AZ3.html
So what's so great about the Sky Watcher Evostar 90 AZ3 telescope kit?
The Evostar 90 is a great "classic" 90mm astronomy telescope. It has a good-sized aperture (90mm) to achieve high resolution images, and has a useful long focal length to achieve high magnifications without making the telescope too difficult to use.
At two or three times the price, this 90mm is a well-engineered scope - at our price it's extraordinary value for money.
The included AZ-3 mount and tripod is a brilliant innovation allowing the telescope to be used terrestrially in daytime (for distant target viewing) and also to smoothly track targets in the night sky, at the turn of a knob - be sure to watch our video demonstration of this feature. The Evostar 90 can be upgraded and added to in many different ways.
For example, it has a standard 1.25" eyepiece holder (regarded by the telescope industry as the hallmark of a serious telescope) allowing a wide range of additional accessories to be attached. These accessories include camera adaptors (to try your hand at wildlife and astro-photography), 2x Barlows, to greatly increase magnification with each eyepiece as well as wide range of specialist eyepieces. A safe Solar observation filter is also available for Evostar 90.
What can you see with the Evostar 90?
At medium power the Moon becomes a fabulously intricate landscape of craters, rays and rills. At higher power individual crater systems can be explored. The planet Mars will show numerous details on its surface and the polar cap can be seen during ideal observing conditions.
At good observing times, when observed at just 50x magnification using the included 10mm eyepiece, the planet Jupiter will appear as a banded disc larger in size than you normally see the full Moon with the unaided eye! In ideal viewing conditions, detail can be seen in the violent atmosphere of this greatest of the gas giants that can be observed in motion on the planet's disk in just a few minutes. The four main moons of Jupiter will be seen orbiting the giant planet, sometimes casting shadows onto Jupiter's dense cloudy atmosphere - they too can be see to clearly move and change position in just 20 minutes of observing. And don't forget these are all things that you cannot possibly see with the un-aided eye (unless you actually go there that is!).
The planet Saturn will show its magnificent ring system and its bright famous moon Titan. These are just a few of the things that can be seen in our own solar system with the Evostar telescope.
-
Cool, you'll get some pretty decent moon and planetary views with that then, and also see plenty of nebulae and galaxies through it. (Don't be too excited about the deep sky objects, they all look like fuzzy, grey/white blurs through a telescope...you don't see any colour unless you start doing long-exposure photography.)
But yeah, grab yourself a T-Mount and T-Adapter and you can fit your camera to it.
-
ever tried anything like these lenses? http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1600mm-Samyang-Mirror-Lens-for-Nikon-D100-D80-D40-D70-D50-D90-D4-D800-D800E-/261184982809?pt=UK_Lenses_Filters_Lenses&hash=item3ccfd68f19
Is that just like a very compact telephoto?... good price if those examples are anything to go by.
-
ever tried anything like these lenses? http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1600mm-Samyang-Mirror-Lens-for-Nikon-D100-D80-D40-D70-D50-D90-D4-D800-D800E-/261184982809?pt=UK_Lenses_Filters_Lenses&hash=item3ccfd68f19
That's a bit misleading. They're selling it as a 1600mm lens, but it's actually an 800mm lens with a 2x tele-converter.
Samyangs are meant to be quite reasonable, at least in their short primes, although they are all manual focus.
-
In all honesty it would have to be absolutely massive to be a 1600mm and still good quality.
But you don't need a massive lens really. This was taken with a 50mm prime lens.
(http://i46.tinypic.com/205drly.jpg)
I took about fifty images, at f/3.5, ISO1600, 10s exposure, with my Canon EOS 450D, and then stacked them all together in a program called DeepSkyStacker. Bit of post-processing to brighten things up a bit.
Okay, I know it's pretty crap, but for an astronomer it's quite interesting. The blur near the bottom right is Comet Panstarrs. It's just passing through the solar system on its 100,000 year orbit, on its way out again now. It was hoped to be naked-eye visible, but never really proved that bright...not from the UK anyway...not from the South. (Wait until Comet ISON appears in November...that could be amazing!)
A bit further up in my image, and left a bit, is another blur. That's the Andromeda Galaxy, M31. On a clear night that is naked-eye visible, and is the most distant of such objects. 2.5 million light years away.
-
Meitiour shower tonight!