More summer astrophotography

Since the beautiful west coast weather continues so to do the opportunities to take pictures. The latest include a few more shots of Andromeda and the Whirlpool Galaxy as well as a new target: the North American Nebula. I think I've finally got my autoguider working correctly and so far am reasonably pleased with how its going. Hopefully I'll have one more opportunity before I leave for Spain!

Galaxies, Clusters and Nebulas

In the past 6 weeks I've done more stargazing than I have in the past 6 months. This includes 3 or 4 all night sessions on Mount Seymour and a few nights in the park across from our condo. The photography is fun, but very demanding. Even though it can take an hour to get one good picture, being able to look at what I've accomplished is definitely worth all the cold nights.

The latest photos, taken July 29th include a nice shot of the Triangulum Galaxy and the Pleiades. I'm especially pleased with the Pleiades mostly because I also captured the reflection nebula around it.

A few more summer pics

I'm taking full advantage of the nice weather I've finally been given. After months and months of cloud and rain its finally summer and warm in Vancouver. So over the last month I've spent many hours staring at the stars and the little LCD display on my DSLR. All that work has resulted in the following two pictures (actually there are about half a dozen more but they didn't turn out particularly well). I'm slowing getting the focusing issue under control at least with the my refractor (the SCT is still a pain to deal with photographically speaking). Anyway these pictures are of the Dumbell Nebula (look to a previous post if you want to compare it to my first image of the Dumbell Nebula.)

The second image is of the Ring Nebula. Its a very small, bright planetary nebula. This picture (like most of the images) was taken through my 85 mm refractor and I think the next time I decide to image the Ring Nebula I'll try it with my 8" SCT. Its such a small target that the extra magnification should make a bug difference.

Galaxies & Nebulae of the summer

After one of the first stargazing seasons I can remember it looks like summer has finally arrived. The last few days have been beautiful. So last Saturday I set out for a 4.5 hour stargazing session on Mount Seymour. My goal was to test my telescopes focusing ability and see how long I could track for. I was also eager to try and get some nice deep sky pictures. In addition to this I really wanted to get my autoguider working properly.

I managed to more or less accomplish most of my goals. Focusing was acceptable on the TV-85. Not perfect, to do that I suspect I'll need a motor-focuser (and a camera with live view so I can properly use my Bahtinov mask). The maximum time I could track for without trailing becoming too noticible was just under 3 minutes. Both of these resulted in some nice deep sky pictures. I still have higher expectations but it was a good start.

Summer Sun

Well, after what seems like months of rain and clouds it seems like summer might actually have arrived. The last few days have been more or less rain free and the clouds are slowly starting to reveal the blue sky behind them. Unfortunately the evenings still manage to muster enough clouds to prevent any serious stargazing. So today I took advantage of the warm summer weather to do some solar observing.

Its ironic but the sun is one of my favorite targets. There is so much detail and structure that just isn't apparent on other celestial bodies. This is particularly true with my PST. I managed to take some decent HA videos but only one of them actually processed decently. Still, I'm hopefully that the next few weeks will provide more opportunities! Enjoy!

Saturn

Saturn sits just over 1 billion kilometers from Earth at its closest. Its amazing to me that, given the enormous distance away, we are still treated to some absolutely breathtaking views of the ringed planet. Since the rain has more or less stopped over the past few weeks I've been doing my best to get out and take some shots of Saturn. The latest pictures were about 5 minute movies that I shot with a Phillips webcam and stacked together. They turned out reasonably well, but I'm hampered by the relatively small size of the chip in the webcam. I have another idea that I'm going to try (hopefully tomorrow) which is to use a point and shoot camera and try some afocal shots.

Anyway for the time being these are the best shots of Saturn I could get.

Summer Skies

As of June 2nd it looks like summer has 'officially' begun in Vancouver. The weather has finally improved and the skies are clear enough to do some decent stargazing. The only downside is that because summer has started so late the skies don't darken until around midnight. But nevermind that. This past weekend I spent two nights and a total of close to 8 hours stargazing on Mount Seymour. I spent most of the time trying to work out how to use my new autoguider which has been sitting in storage for nearly 4 months since I bought it. Turns out that its quite easy to use, although I'll have to see if the set up I have will really work with it.

With the help of a friend, Chris Ho, I also attached a laser pointer to the rings of my refractor (on the left side of the telescope in the pictures). Unfortunately the batteries get really cold and it doesn't work very well. I'm going to have to see if there is another way around this problem; I'll think of something I'm sure.

So like I said, this past weekend I spent quite a bit of time stargazing. On Friday night it was mostly an inauguration of the new telescope and then testing out my autoguider. On Saturday I set up to do some imaging and despite some thin, high clouds I was rewarded with two decent photos. The first was of Saturn, and although its not bad, I'm not satisfied. Hopefully I'll get a few more opportunities before the summer. This particular photo was shot with a Celestron NexImage through a Celestron 8" SCT. The image was 1000 frames stacked in Registack.

The other picture was of M13, the Hercules Cluster. Focusing was a bit of a bugger, mostly tons of trial and error. Fortunately my new motor focuser should be arriving sometime in the next couple of weeks. Hopefully the postal strike doesn't get in the way. Anyway, I was using my canon 400D and stacked 5 images of 90 seconds each. I didn't do a particularly good polar alignment (at least as far as photography goes) and with the 3 minute exposures I tried I was beginning to see some trailing so I opted for the shorter exposures in the end. Plus, it meant less waiting and at 2:30 am I was getting cold and tired. After I stacked the pictures I noticed a very unexpected result. Looking closely at the middle left there was a slight smudge that at first I thought was just the result of imperfect focusing. After checking with a star atlas I realised that not only did I photograph M13 but I also managed to capture NGC 6207, a spiral galaxy about 30 million light years away.

So with my first real star cluster successfully photographed I just can't wait to get out and do some more stargazing! Hopefully the weather cooperates.