Astronomy Log

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.