Summer Update #2957: April 25th, 2010

While up in Ohiopyle I took some pictures of the moon just using the Canon Rebel XS and a 75-300mm zoom lens on 300mm. I like the look of them, but when I crop or zoom in, the quality goes down significantly.

More pictures from the night here

Summer Update: First Night through the Refractor April 4th, 2010

I attached the T-ring adapter to the Canon Rebel XS, and then attached an Orion Universal Camera Adapter.

Started out with the Beehive Cluster in Prime Focus

Here's Saturn in Prime Focus as well, but it's a bit small

Here's Saturn with an Orion 10mm Plossl Eyepiece projection

Lastly, the crop of one of my Saturn pictures
More pictures here

Summer Update: March 20th 2010 - Moon & Pleiades

I tried getting the moon and the Pleiades together in a shot, and I was successful! Although, in most of them, the moon was overexposed and the Pleiades underexposed. Any thoughts on how to fix this?

Moon with Pleiades


Setting Moon


Some Star Trails

Overall, nothing spectacular, but good practice for learning the basics. I need to find somewhere that's not light polluted to take star trails.

More pictures from this night here

Summer Update: March 17th, 2010

So the next night I went out again, and found that a parking lot not too far from home provided me a great view of the western horizon. Same subject matter as last time, but much earlier in the night. I really liked the sunset colors in the pictures, but there wasn't much emphasis on Venus or the Moon, since they are really small compared to the local landmarks from my perspective.

Moon, Venus, and Applebee's

Some good Earthshine bouncing off the dark side of the moon here.

More pics from March 17th, 2010 here

Summer Catch-up: March 16th pictures

So back in March I started taking some pictures just with the DSLR on a tripod with the 75-300mm lens. This was the first night I went out, which included a very young crescent moon. The pictures aren't spectacular, but I was happy to be able to fit Venus and a cool lookin' moon in one shot. (You'll have to open it up to see it in better detail.) I should find a better foreground for the pictures, and probably time it better so that the sunset colors come out.

More pictures from March 16th, 2010 here

What I've learned (focus)

It's darn hard to focus well - I've found that turning on the live view, and then zooming in on the moon works well, but not the best (Auto focus doesn't work). Even looking at RAW pictures, it's not as in focus as I'd like when I zoom in. I guess if I want good pics of the moon I'll attach the camera to one of my ultimate zoom lenses - one of the telescopes. More on that once I try it out.

Any other thoughts from anyone out there?

What I've learned so far (ISO)

May seem obvious if you've done SLR photography before, but to those of us who haven't...ISO determines how sensitive the chip is. ISO 100 means it's less sensitive, therefore the shutter needs to be open longer or the f-stop lower to allow more light in regular photography. In shooting pictures of stars...ISO 100 means you can take longer star trail pictures. ISO 1600 means it'll take less time for the light pollution to kick in and a shorter shutter speed. I hear the trade off in this though is that there is a lot more noise in with a higher ISO because it magnifies each signal the chip in the camera gets, including the random noise that we want so little of in astrophotography. So to summarize, ISO 1600 good for sports and ISO 100 good for astronomy (Yes, a broad generalization, but hey, I'm beginning...) Pictures coming soon...