"...Inexpensive digital cameras, consumer camcorders and even webcams are helping amateurs take pictures of the cosmos that only professional astronomers could have achieved a few years ago... Stefan Seip snapped an astonishing picture of the sun... from his balcony during breakfast with his girlfriend, using a 4-inch refractor telescope, a special filter and an inexpensive digital camera...that was chosen by NASA as the Astronomy Picture of the Day on July 7...about a third of the pictures that run on the site these days are submitted by amateurs..."
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,59682,00.html

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bunk: Empty talk; nonsense.
de·bunk: To expose or ridicule the falseness, sham, or exaggerated claims of.
http://home.iprimus.com.au/eddo/images/fredheadtsp.gif

I have a Nikon Coolpix 4500 and take (try too) pics using an ETX90 or an LX90, both Meade scopes. My results are just starting to become acceptable but you have no idea how excited I get when one of them turns out to be a good one. Capturing these images so I can see them again and again and show my friends what can be seen is a great reward for me.
It also was a great relief that I didnt have to fork over 2 billion+ dollars for a scope in orbit to do this. These newer scopes and equipment give average guys like me a chance to have a great time with a very fascinating hobby.

When I saw that image I first thought it was from a NASA mission like TRACE. Hard to believe it was taken from Earth with a small telescope.

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

I'm just now getting started in astrophotography. Haven't moved to the digital age yet, just an old Pentax K1000. Have a new Orion SpaceProbe 130 reflector that I'll most likely be breaking in this weekend.

Sure wish I had some server space som'ers to post my better efforts for folk to ooh and aah over...

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"If a tree is cut down in the rainforest, and is used to make paper to print a book, and the book is really bad, and there's nobody that will read it, do you still hear a sucking sound?"
Charlie in Dayton, A.AsC.

I have a Pentaz MZ-M which I use for astrophotography. It's quite basic, being more of a beginner's SLR, but I've gotten some good pics with it, or at least as good as I could get given the chronic light pollution around this area.

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Freedom For Fission A breath of fresh Iodine-131

I'd love to see your results! I have a ETX-90 as well and have been thinking about trying some shots with my Canon PowerShot S40. Do you use a special mount or are you just holding the camera up to the eyepiece?

The only astrophotography I've done to date has been the aurora borealis shots I took last year in Iceland. Go Here if you want to take a look. The aurora shots were all done on Kodak Max 400/800 color film using a 35mm Nikon SLR.

I've been trying to get better at astrophotography too.

I have the Moon.

the Sun.

the Lagoon and Trifid nebulas.

and the Lunar eclipse.

These are just the successful pics...I have shot at least 10 rolls of film at the skies at night...it's sort of a hit-and-miss venture for me at this point. The thing is, our usually clear Arizona night skies are darkened by Monsoon storms this time of year...just in time for Mars...darn it all.

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~Brad - Astropaparazzo
http://signaturedigitalimages.com

Hamlet wrote:

I use an adapter made by Scopetronix. It is basically an 18mm eyepiece with threads to mate to my camera lens threads and it results in a very secure mount. They make them to fit just about any digital camera now. Works great and it can be used as a normal eyepiece also.
They also make the adapter in a 14mm version.

Thanks mutant! I'll check them out.

I have an Orion Steadipix mount for afocal photography that is similar to the Scopetronix device. I haven't used mine yet, it just came last week. I blew off a roll of film through my old Pentax K1000 at prime focus on the morning of the Moon/Mars (near)occultation but the results were much less than "stellar". I did get some very nice video of the Moon on the morning of the 20th through my new Orion electronic eyepiece. Mars was a bust, though, it was badly overexposed- just a bright white ball. No manual gain control on the electronic eyepiece . I'll have to figure out some kind of workaround I guess.

Correction: Scopetronix makes an adapter for afocal photography which is similar to the Orion Steadipix. It is not the same adapter mentioned above.

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If you can't dazzle 'em with dexterity, baffle 'em with BS.

She's been my backdoor neighbor, and co-worker at two different jobs. She's given me some server space, taught me FTP'ing, and is gonna instruct me in Photoshop. Bless you, Lori Martin...

First efforts in astrophotography, Pentax K1000/200 speed film/50mm and 135mm lenses/unPhotoshopped...

Best Of The Moon


Double Dippers


Polaris Star Trails


Photoshop, stacking/unsharp masking, level adjust...new 5" scope...faster film...this is gonna be interesting...

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"If a tree is cut down in the rainforest, and is used to make paper to print a book, and the book is really bad, and there's nobody that will read it, do you still hear a sucking sound?"
Charlie in Dayton, A.AsC.

Yup! And expensive!! You have just taken the first baby steps on the quest for the (illusory) ultimate astrophotograph. 8) Enjoy!!! :wink:

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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

Wow! You guys take great pics! I have to contend with using a VERY BAD quality webcam that doesn't allow you to remove the lens to couple it to the eyepiece or barlow. So I have to just put the camera up to the eyepiece and hope for the best. I make a video of the image and use registax software to make it alot better and sharper by stacking and processing. I've only atempted to image the moon two times and heres the result:

first attempt:



second:




hmmm... the pics don't show. ah well

skyglow1

Nice pics guys

Skyglow, I copied and pasted your image links to my browser address window and they came up...and now they show just fine in the message body too...weird.







BTW: In case you guys didnt notice, the images in my post are just thumbnails which link you to the actual full-sized image.

I took the solar pic through my brother's 8" dobs, which is why it's a bit blurry. The Lagoon picture is a piggyback setup with a 80-200mm Canon lens, the lunar closeup is a prime focus, on a Meade 8" SC with a GoTo Altazimuth mount. The lunar eclipse is just a tripod and 28-80mm Canon lens and a true multiple exposure (all the moons are on one frame, not several frames stacked in photoshop)...in case you guys were wondering.

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~Brad - Astropaparazzo
http://signaturedigitalimages.com

It still doesn't show. Ah well, they're very bad anyway.

skyglow1

Hmmmmm, I have tried to post a pic of mine in here but I cant seem to figure out how to do it. I am not a computer literate person as if you couldnt guess. Could anyone give me a short explanation on how to do it please? I dont have anything earth shaking to post; just a couple of moon pics, but I'd like to show people at least I am trying. Thankyou.

I think the pictures must first be somewhere on the Internet, then,
put your text above or below the quoting image:

Your text...

[img] adress link of image [/img]

Your text...

It says the image canot be displayed because it contains errors. Oh well, you guys don't need to see them anyway.

skyglow1

Is it the image itself that has the error, or maybe the address where the image is stored? What format is the image in---.jpg, .pic, .bmp, etc.?

The image itself has erros but now its okay....

The links for the images are: http://www12.brinkster.com/skyglow1/1.jpg and http://www12.brinkster.com/skyglow1/2.jpg

skyglow1