Astrophotography Archives - Page 59 of 72

December 29, 2018December 16, 2020

The Orion Nebula 12/28/2018

On what might be the final clear night of the year, I set up my C11 (Elf) and used my Canon EOS t5 to take this picture. I used BackyardEOS to control the camera. This is 21 30 second images combined. I haven’t done deepsky other than with the stock lens of my camera in a long time and I’ve forgotten the techniques I once knew. The seeing Friday was not as bad as predicted but not great and focus was hard to come by. Once I worked through the details of acquisition, I got my images. After acquisition I remembered my focal reducer/corrector which would have helped, this is prime focus at f/10. Saturday morning I auto aligned in Photoshop and switched back to Lightroom for processing. Click image for a larger view.

December 23, 2018December 16, 2020

12/23/2018 Comet P46/Wirtanen

I had my first opportunity to try to image the comet tonight. With a small window of opportunity before the Moon rose I traveled light and just set the DSLR on a tripod. This is a 30 second shot at ISO 6400. Maybe in a few days it will be clear again and I can use the SCT. The bright star at the top is Capella, the comet is a little lower and to the left.

July 7, 2018December 16, 2020

7/1/2018 – Jupiter and Saturn

Here are two images from Saturday night at the River Ridge Observatory. Both were shot with a monochrome camera using red, green, and blue filters and a 9.25″ SCT. Each color was picked from the best 50% of about 3000 frames (30 seconds of video). Stacked then aligned and combined in Photoshop. Jupiter was shot with 10 millisecond exposures while Saturn required 50 millisecond. Saturn was barely above the trees and I should have waited but frankly it is near the southern limit of its journey around the Sun and doesn’t get too high. Jupiter was just past the meridian. I may work with it some more when I have time, the raw footage looked like it would be better than this.