Astronomy Log

I popped out last night with just my static tripod and camera to try and get some shots of the conjunction of the moon and pleiades.  I spent about 30 minutes outside in the wind, which was making the camera move.  So I ended up taking about 50 shots in total.

Unfortunately as the moon was so bright getting the faintness of the pleiades with the brightness of the moon was very difficult. I took all the shots at ISO800 on my Canon 300mm lens with varying exposure times.

Below is the best I got, which is pretty bad, I think I would have been better taking the photos of the pleiades  and the moon separately and then just putting the scene together in a photo editor program.

The only good thing to come out of the 30 minutes was this shot of just the moon. It’s quite amazing what a 300mm lens can do, and it shows you don’t need a telescope in order to take nice images of the moon.

I went to bed at 9pm on the 20th February and managed to get up at 2.30am in order to get some images of the lunar eclipse.  I knew it was going to be cloudy tonight, but I thought the bright moon would shine through any cloud, how wrong I was.

Luckily after setting up and letting the LX200 do it’s setup routine, I managed to somehow find focus on the moon and get a few images.  It was difficult to get focus on the moon when it was covered by cloud, but after the first 10 minutes or so the cloud came over and the moon disappeared for the rest of the night, I came in at about 4.30am.

I even had to pull my whole telescope by the leg and re-align it manually as the moon disappeared behind the ridge of my house roof, whilst I waited for a better view.

I think if I could do it all again I would have set up my telescope earlier and found perfect focus then left the telescope alone until the lunar eclipse began, rather than try and find focus when the moon was covered by cloud.

The image was taken at prime focus f/0 through the telescope using my Canon 400D with an exposure time of 5 seconds at ISO800.

After purchasing my Meade DSI Pro from eBay (see this post about it), I was itching to give it a go. As the moon was out, it seemed the perfect object to use in order to ‘cut my teeth’ on the DSI Pro, especially as I do not have any CCD filters to use yet in order to get colour images.

I was quite amazed at the quality of the images of the moon, and somewhat better than a Philips SPC900 web cam. I did not have the LX200 telescope driven by the Autosuite program, I just used the Autosuite imaging program on it’s own, with the moon preset selected.

Not too bad for my first use, I have since read the PDF manuals, but I think it is really practice makes perfect with the DSI Pro. I think I may also need a f3.3 focal reducer as the f6 focal reducer I have does not quite cut it. I also need the Meade CCD filters, although I think I will try it with normal 1.25″ colour filters first and see what I get.

Whilst out in the garden at lunchtime I was amazed to see the moon at around 2pm in the western sky today, not something I get to see often, so I had to go and get my tripod, remote and 300mm lens out and here is what I took.

f/11, 1/500sec, 300mm, ISO200

Whilst out the with telescope I also got my first chance to try out my Canon 75-300mm USM lens attached to my Canon 400D on the moon.

To try and show what is capable with the lens, I have included shots of the moon at various settings, also I used a tripod and remote control for these images.

Camera Settings: Exposure time was 1/200 sec at f/5.6 and ISO200

The moon at 75mm Zoom:

The moon at 150mm Zoom:

The moon at 300mm Zoom:

The same shot again at 300mm but at 100% magnification:

I think this final shot is really quite good with just a 300mm camera lens, which cost me around £125, nearly as good as using a telescope for the shot.

This is an image of the moon I took on 31st August 2007. I took this through my telescope on my Canon 400D by the prime focus method, which is adding the camera directly to the telescope and I did not use any extra eyepieces, just the natural magnification of the telescope.

What a bright night sky, due to the full moon, which was incredibly bright tonight. The brightness of the moon literally blinded me when looking through either the viewfinder or an eyepiece. The brightness also knocked out a lot of the night sky and a number of stars became invisible.

This brought it’s own new challenges when trying to complete some photography, the webcam needed to be set to a low brightness and the digital camera required lots of experimentation to get some pictures of the moon.

Most of the pictures were taken at ISO100 at 1/25 second exposures. I then brightened them with the auto levels in Fireworks.

I also finally managed to located the Andromeda Galaxy, which through my telescope looked like a small hazy disc, but I was pleased to located it at last.

I also manually found the Ring Nebula again, it did look quite small, too small infact for me to get any photographic evidence, as I just could not get focus on either the ring nebula or the andromeda galaxy. I may try again at a later date or when I have a bigger telescope.

I stayed out until 1.30am, and at that time the temperature was about 8 degrees, and it felt cold for summer! Anyway at that time I checked Starry Night Pro and discovered that Mars was now starting to appear on the horizon. Amazing my first view of Mars, it was definitely orange coloured if not a little small in my telescope. Hopefully we will be seeing a lot more of Mars in the coming months, at an earlier time of the day, enabling me to get some photographs.

At last I managed to get outside last night, after what seems like weeks of constant rain and cloudy skies.

I managed to take some more photos of the full moon, my first visible in my telescope. I was amazed at the sharpness and crispness of the view of the moon through my Meade Bresser 130N telescope. The most interesting sight was the crusty type of craters at the edges of the moon, which made the moon look really 3D through the eyepiece.

I am still getting blurry images of the moon, but that must be due to the constant movement, or just because I am holding the camera up to the lens as opposed to having it fixed to the telescope.

I included the image below as I liked the colour it gave the moon, the image was really a mistake as I took the photo on auto on the camera and it left the flash on.

I am trying to conquer taking pictures of the moon first. I have tried taking pictures using my Canon IXUS 500 by just positioning the camera up against the lens of the telescope. I have also tried using my 2 megapixel Nokia mobile with a little less success. But hey it’s a cheap way of taking photos!

The first photo above shows a greater shadow, with more grey and more definition, I think that is coming from not lining up the camera lens exactly with the telescope lens, whereas the second photo is an exact shot.

I am looking forward to trying a webcam adaptor with my logitech webcam if it will fit and then taking some video and trying out some of the astronomy freeware software to manipulate the images.

I am finding the moon amazing, especially the way that as the moon gets fuller how much brighter it becomes, nearly blinding! I think I also need to get myself a moon filter to take away the brightness.

These are my first ever photos of the moon, which appears to be in one of it’s early phases.

What an amazing site, seeing the moon for the first time up close from your own telescope. The clarity of the moon in the eyepiece is very good. I could stare at it for ages and ages.