Astrophotography Archives - Page 56 of 61

April 9, 2016December 16, 2020

Sunspot 4/9/2016

Here is a reasonably large sunspot group shot with my 80mm Celestron Onyx ED and ASI120 MM camera. I got the monochromatic camera to complement the color ASI120 MC camera I use for planets and it did a good job here. I got the scope and the light duty Celestron Nexstar mount with next year’s total solar eclipse in mind. All three performed well today although I have to work on my technique. I had to have Jack focus the scope while I ducked my head under a towel and peered at the laptop screen. I’m planning to get some easy to pop up canopy for the eclipse sometime and that would help here too. A better focuser might help. Not Jack, he did fine, but a dual speed replacement for the OEM focuser.

November 26, 2015December 16, 2020

Full Moon 11/25/2015 (Thanksgiving Eve)

Wednesday night the clouds were starting to roll in for the start of five days of clouds so I grabbed my Canon SX50 HS with 1200 mm equivalent zoom and leaned against the car to get this shot. I was impressed by how much detail was there. I tweaked it a little in Photoshop, blackening the background and bringing out some details on the surface. Look how the rays from Tycho in the south can be seen across vast distances.

October 11, 2015December 16, 2020

Uranus and Neptune October 10, 2015

Saturday night was very clear and steady so after the CAAS meeting I set up my camera to capture these two so called “ice giants”. Everything worked well from tracking, to focus, to imaging. Unfortunately they are both dim and small so there is little detail to show but as you can see they both show disks and similar colors. I’ve placed Uranus on the left and Neptune on the right. Both images are to the same scale, prime focus in a 2350 mm focal length SCT. Uranus was taken at best 50% of 500 100 ms frames while Neptune was taken at 250 ms. Of course, besides similar color the obvious difference is size. Both are almost identical in true size but Neptune is farther.