smr's Astrophotography

[smr]

How do you power for that long?

I power my mount and accessories off the mains in my house.

My camera I power with 2 batteries, if one's running low I can take it out and charge it up whilst using the other one.

 

[smr]

#4 at home getting to #2 an hour or so West but I'm up on Mull in a few weeks the majority of which is #1 (21.99 where I'm stopping).

Great photography smr.

Thanks. The sky would look stunning in Mull I'm sure, and astrophotography would be superb there.

 

[No-One]

Rural Rutland sounds great for astrophotography.

I only have a 70D with the 18-135 IS STM and a Sigma 10-20 but I did get these at Rutland Water back in March. They're more nightscapes than astro but they still give a general idea of what the sky is like here








When I was on holiday in Tenerife last year I managed to go on a trip up Mt. Teide at night. The view of the night sky from that altitude was incredible. I want to go back now and rent a car just so I can spend time up there with my camera. I did get a couple of shots of the milky way core but nothing special

 

[And]

You're welcome. Yes, the sky is great for astro there plus a better chance of aurora than here in sunny North Wales.

Thanks. The sky would look stunning in Mull I'm sure, and astrophotography would be superb there.

 

[The_Abyss]

When I was on holiday in Tenerife last year I managed to go on a trip up Mt. Teide at night. The view of the night sky from that altitude was incredible. I want to go back now and rent a car just so I can spend time up there with my camera. I did get a couple of shots of the milky way core but nothing special

I did the same this year, but only stayed until the light was starting to fade. However, already at that point the night sky was already beginning to reveal itself. I was considering going back in March for 4 -5 days for a photography trip up there.

Perhaps we should see if there's a group of us interested? FWIW I don't think it is necessary to go right up Teide - just the plain below is more than sufficient, and it is very accessible from the road.

 

[No-One]

We didn’t go right up. The bus took us up to the national park in the afternoon, we watched the sunset from a viewing spot at the roadside, went for a meal and then did the stargazing from just down the road from the cable car station. Didn’t get back to the hotel until nearly 2am

 

[The_Abyss]

Was this the place you stopped? Should be possible to camp here overnight without any problems, with good mountains on either side

 

[No-One]

That looks like an area I've stopped at previously in a hire car but not on this particular tour. From memory we stopped here to watch the sunset

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@28.306434,-16.5582733,304m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en



Then we had a meal at a restaurant and then they took us here to stargaze

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@28.2260915,-16.6282312,162a,49.6y,1.03t/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en

 

[chroniclard]

Great pics, everyone above!

 

[The_Abyss]

This is where I took my photo from
Dropped pin
Near Llano de Ucanca Vista Point, 38300 La Orotava, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain
https://goo.gl/maps/NEFETa3CowBxzjED9

The plain there is dead flat and perfect for sitting out all night.

Sorry for briefly hijacking the thread smr!

 

[smr]

Hi all,

This is my longest astrophotography project to date.

The Veil Nebula is a cloud of heated and ionized gas and dust in the constellation Cygnus.

It constitutes the visible portions of the Cygnus Loop, a supernova remnant, many portions of which have acquired their own individual names and catalogue identifiers. The source supernova was a star 20 times more massive than the Sun, which exploded around 8,000 years ago. The remnants have since expanded to cover an area of the sky roughly 3 degrees in diameter (about 6 times the diameter, or 36 times the area, of the full Moon). The distance to the nebula is not precisely known, but Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) data supports a distance of about 1,470 light years.

Integration:
15 hours, 50 minutes of total exposure time
ISO 200
No Darks (Dithered)
200 Bias Frames
25 Flats Per Session

Equipment:
Telescope: William Optics Zenithstar 73
Mount: Sky-Watcher HEQ5 Pro Rowan Belt Mod
Autoguiding Scope: Starwave 50mm Guidescope
Autoguiding Camera: ZWO ASI 120MM Mini
Camera: Canon 80D (unmodified)

Software:
PHD2 Guiding
Astrophotography Tool
Deepskystacker
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Lightroom

Eastern Veil Nebula by Joel Spencer, on Flickr

I've just started an Astrophotography channel as well so if you want to see the final session you can here...

 

[Quartz]

Wow.

 

[Random Guy Esq.]

Very cool!

 

[Rannoch]

Very nice. My favourite object is the Horsehead Nebula, not much to look at visually but I spent many hours viewing faint details.

 

[Bagnaj97]

That's a fantastic Veil with an unmodded camera. Nice round stars into the corners - flattener, cropped or both?

 

[Zirax]

Thanks for sharing the vid, it has answered a few questions that I had of how stuff worked.

Where roughly town wise are you? If you can pull pics like that from your back garden....... There might be hope for me
Would there be a big difference in quality if you dropped to ISO 100 and took longer?

 

[smr]

Wow.

Thanks!

Very cool!

Very cool indeed!

Very nice. My favourite object is the Horsehead Nebula, not much to look at visually but I spent many hours viewing faint details.

Thanks. Yes I love the HH Nebula. Probably my favourite too.

That's a fantastic Veil with an unmodded camera. Nice round stars into the corners - flattener, cropped or both?

Thanks. Yes got the Z73 field flattener and it's cropped in quite a bit too.

Thanks for sharing the vid, it has answered a few questions that I had of how stuff worked.

Where roughly town wise are you? If you can pull pics like that from your back garden....... There might be hope for me
Would there be a big difference in quality if you dropped to ISO 100 and took longer?

I'm in a village quite away from the nearest city. I don't think there would be a massive difference in quality if I went to ISO 100.

 

[Zirax]

I'm in a village quite away from the nearest city. I don't think there would be a massive difference in quality if I went to ISO 100.

Doh, hope denied!

On the ISO i'm not too sure. There might be something, but if is noticeable and worth the extra time.... pass. On my d7100 there is a drop off at ISO400 in low light. But I concede that might have something to do with the idiot with the camera

 

[smr]

Hi,

Here's my image of the Triangulum Galaxy.

The Triangulum Galaxy is a Spiral Galaxy located roughly 2.73 Million Light Years from Earth in the constellation Triangulum. It's just the third largest member in the local group, behind our own galaxy, the Milky Way, and also Andromeda. The Triangulum Galaxy is believed to be a satellite galaxy of the Andromeda Galaxy owing to their proximity, velocity and interactions. Even though it's an astonishing 3 or so million light years away from Earth, it can be seen with the naked under eye under very good (dark and no light pollution) skies.


My image is the result of stacking 125 photographs together, some three minutes long and most five minutes in length. I then stacked them together in a program called DeepSkyStacker and processed the resulting stacked image in Adobe Photoshop CS6.


Acquired with the following equipment:

Imaging Camera: Canon 80D (stock, unmodified)
Telescope: William Optics Zenithstar 73
Mount: HEQ5 Pro Rowan Belt Modified
Guide Camera: ZWO ASI120MM Mini Autoguiding Camera
Guidescope: Altair Starwave 50mm
Image Acquisition Software: Astrophotography Tool
Guiding Software: PHD2 Guiding Software
Bortle 5 Skies
No Light Pollution Filter
125 Light Frames
100 Bias Frames
No Dark Frames (Dithered)
20 Flat Frames per (three) sessions


Thanks for looking.

The Triangulum Galaxy, Messier 33 by Joel Spencer, on Flickr

 

[The_Abyss]

Meh, when you’ve seen one galaxy...

Awesome, as always.