Astrophotography

[RandalG]

Anyone into it? Although not directly related to city or state as this forum's description states they are pics of our corner of the Milky Way Galaxy in which we live.



Our Star



Sunspots



Christmas Eclipse 2000



1st Quarter Moon



Apollo 11 Landing Site



Lunar Eclipse



Conjunction - Moon, Jupiter & Venus - Orland Park, Illinois



The Great Orion Nebula



The Cygnus Region of the Milky Way Galaxy. Our home is located on the inner part of a minor spiral arm called the Orion-Cygnus Arm or sometimes called the Local Spur. The red nebula to the middle left of the image or just to the left of the bright star Deneb is the North American Nebula called that because of it's shape.

[Ric]

some great shots

[javo]

Those are awesome!

[KenNTx]

Are these photos that you snapped or are they off the internet ??

[RandalG]

I took most of them sometime ago when film was still fairly common using this:



At the time dedicated ccd cameras for astrophotography were very expensive. Now that we've moved firmly in the digital age I've recently got a digital slr camera I'll be using primarily just for astrophotography which will give me much more versatility than film did. You don't need a telescope to get into astrophotography though. You can get some nice shots of conjunctions and star trails just by using a camera and a tripod.

[Keith]

Can you hook up your digital SLR to a normal telescope and take decent photos?

[havasu]

That last photo really puts everything in perspective as to how small we actually are. Thanks for the great pics!

[RandalG]

Originally Posted by Keith

Can you hook up your digital SLR to a normal telescope and take decent photos?

Yes, but it depends on what kind of pictures you want to take. For long exposure deep sky astrophotograhy (nebulas,starclusters,galaxies)you really need a sturdy mount with a motor drive as the photo needs to be guided either manually or with an autoguider to keep the stars in the image from trailing. If you are interested in planetary imaging the moon and planets are so bright they require short exposures where guiding is not as critical but is more dependent on the turbulence in the atmosphere to get a clear shot. When you say normal I assume you mean a refractor on a standard tripod which would work for planetary but be frustrating for deep sky. Hope this helps.

[teaberryeagle]

These were taken with a Canon Powershot S2 IS......48x (12 optical and 4 digital), 5 mp.....don't miss the "UFO" in the last photo..

[RandalG]

^ Nicely done! Digital cameras have come a long way in recent years.