A Sky Much Further

[rox]

Woof Dogz.

I've been getting into astrophotography during the last few months, on a budget. I don't have a telescope but that doesn't mean I can't shoot a wide array of objects with the cheap but sufficient 18-55mm and 75-300mm Canon lenses. So far I only have pictures of the moon and four deep space pictures, becuase I rarely have access to sufficiently dark skies where light pollution isn't a problem for imaging faint nebulae or galaxies. The crucial part of the gear which I bought used is a motorized equatorial mount which tracks the movement of the night sky as the earth rotates, without which long exposures which are necessary in astrophotography wouldn't be possible due to star trailing. So you take many exposures of up to 3 or 5 or 10 minutes, depends on the conditions and sky tracking accuracy (the longer the exposures the more room for tracking error to become apparent in the photos), and then stack them all into a single photo using a program.

Anyway, here's what I managed to get so far:

Orion nebula at the bottom, Running Man nebula drectly above it, Flame nebula top left by the star, and directly under the same star a VERY faint Horsehead nebula (the slightly reddish area, the horse head itself is the faint black bulge on the middle of it).

A zoom of the Orion and Running Man nebula from the above picture.

Widefield shot of the Milky Way in the Cygnus constellation. The big red nebula near the bottom is the North America nebula, right by it the Pelican nebula, and the red stuff a bit ways to the upper right of these is the Gamma Cygni nebulosity. You can also see a lot of dark dust along the milky way itself which is called the Rift and obscures large parts of the inner Milky Way from view.

Widefield shot towards the galactic core in Sagittarius constellation. Since it lies in the direction of the center of the galaxy this is where the Milky Way is most prominent on the sky. Can see the huge Dark Horse dark nebula on the right, along with many small star clusters and other nebulae. Black on the bottom is a fence that got in the way, I was in hurry as dawn was near do I didn't want to reposition my rig (would have to polar align it again which takes some time to do).

This is a single 3 minute exposure of the Leo Triplet galaxies at 300mm. I only managed to take this one exposure before one of the two tracking motors on my mount died (a connector issue I think, which I'll either fix or buy a new motor for about 30 pounds). I planned on at least an hour of total exposure which would make this look like something, this three minute picture is pretty dim and s**tty, but it's still awesome to know that with a cheap lens like the Canon 75-300mm I can still get distant galaxies to show up in only three minutes.

And here's a widefield shot the entire Leo constellation (nothing special, my first widefield of the night sky). The brightest orange "star" is Mars.

Crescent moon and dark part visible due to earthshine, and on the left is Jupiter with two of ITS moons visible.

Hope to be able to post more and better pictures soon...

[Sweper]

Nice photos Rox. A lot to discover out there. In a photo community where I´m a member, there are some other members that are in to digi-scoping. You only need a simple digital and an adapter to attach the camera to a telescope. I also read about this tracking device you already got. Seem to be fun. Did you caputure the moon when both Venus and Jupiter were at its closest? We saw it pretty clear up here.

Keep them coming.

[FoolTrottel]

Nice results there Rox!

[Jediteo]

That is one thing I miss when living in the city, you cannot really see the night sky any more. Good pictures there Rox, keep it up. What kind of rig are you running?

[BluBear]

Fantastic ROX!

I've been a stargazer since early childhood, long night walks in the dark Irish countryside with the FamilyBear started it all off.

Keep it up mate, I look forward to seeing more pictures of the wonders above.

[Flyboy583]

Rox,

that is awesome! I really enjoyed your photos!! Please share some more will you!

[rox]

Swep, yes I imaged the moon with venus and jupiter but kinda overdid it with noise removal and screwed up the image, and of course deleted the original beforehand because I'm just that stupid so it's lost for good.

Jedi, its a Canon 500D with the lenses I mentioned, and the mount is a used Celestron ADM mount with external motors included, cost me some 120 pounds.

I also use Deep Sky Stacker program for stacking the photos and basic post processing, and then Photoshop for the majority of post processing since the raw files show only the few brightest stars and you need to play with curves a lot to bring out certain data (like dust/nebulae) and filters to subdue other data (like overexposed stars). There's a lot to post processing and I'm only getting the hang of the basic stuff.

[rox]

I don't know if it's a sky much further or a sky much fArther. Damn you illiteracy.

[Jediteo]

Farther is used for physical distances, while further is more figurative or metaphorical.

Ex. "The line must be drawn here, this far, no further"

"The petrol station is farther from the shop than the bakery"

Although as a caveat, there are no grammatical consensus on the two adverbs.

[SkyPup]

That's impressive to get those pics without a telescope. Looks like a fun hobby.

[BadAim]

Very, very sweet mate. To much light polution here as well, I was freaking amazed at the difference when a snow storm took out the power for the entire state in October. I was awestruck, and cold.

[DD_Arthur]

Rox, thats just brilliant! How do you manage to guide yourself onto the Leo Triplets without using a telescope in the first place!?

I've never been able to afford an imaging set up which is a pity as I live out in the sticks with pretty dark skies. From my back garden I have an uninterrupted view of the Eastern horizon. My "observatory" consists of a pair of 10 x 50 Binoculars mounted on a camera tripod and a 200mm SkyWatcher Dobsonian 'scope. The best bang for the money.

Also, I'm very very lucky in that this place;

http://www.normanlockyer.com/

Is a mere five minute drive from my front door! I've been an active member for eight years and done quite a bit of planetary web-cam work using the 6" Lockyer telescope - it's got the best drive and optics of all the telescopes at the observatory - my laptop, the humble Philips Toucam-pro and Registax. I'll dig out some images.

I also use this very handy bit of web based freeware for locating Messier objects

http://www.stellarium.org/

Finally, have you seen this site;

http://stargazerslounge.com/

Very useful, very friendly. Plenty of good advice and enthusiasm on hand.

[rox]

Hey Arthur, I'd love to see your planet pictures from the observatory!

Believe me homing in on Leo Triplet was giving me a headache for some time. I took one minute exposure "framing" shots just so I can review the picture on the LCD and see the faint galaxies. After some trial and error I managed to get them directly in the center of my frame. I dread the day I decide to image M81 and M82 with the 300mm lens, they're an accesible and relatively birght target for my 300mm but those are even harder to find due to their remoteness from any landmark stars.

The 200mm dobson is certainly the best buy for visual observing. I did some observing on a 300mm dobson a guy I know owns and it's damn good, the eastern Veil nebula looked incredible and looking at Jupiter through a binoviewer was simply perverse.

The only observing instrument I own is a 20x60 pair of binoculars, it's great for both open and larger globular star clusters, jupiter's moons and of course our own moon. One day I plan on getting an ED80 refractor for astrophotography and planet observing but that day is far off money-wise.

I have Stellarium and Starry Night. Never got myself to learn using Registax though, tried to use it for some moon shots but find it kinda complicated, compared to Deep Sky Stacker at least, which is for stacking DSO's and pretty straight forward and simple for a peasant like myself.

I've also seen that board though I find myself going more to Cloudy Nights forums. I'll register on this one as well though

[T_O_A_D]

I like it!

I too only do it with 10x50 binoculars.

I've tried a few times, to get a moon eclipse with a camcorder, but its impossible to get any quality with out the tracking motors.

I had no idea you could get those kind of shots with your camera though.

Just one more reason to save the funds for one.

[rox]

Venus transit

Moon and branches

Somewhere in July I'll have two week access to dark skies and will be doing lots and lots of imaging of juicy summer deep sky targets so I should have many photos to post in August.

Just gotta cash out 65 quid to fix my sky tracking rig first :/

[rox]

Hello Dogz. I have acquired much more and much better images this summer. Some through the awesome Canon 50mm 1.8 lens that I bought, lets much more light in that the other two lenses I have. So here goes...

You can click the images for bigger versions.

Cygnus at 50mm with 4.5 hours of total exposure.

Basically all the main sights of Cygnus are visible - leftmost and brightest is the star Deneb, under it are the North America nebula and immediately to its left the Pellican nebula and a few other wisps. The bright star in the upper center is Sadr and is responsible for illuminating the vast Gamma Cygni nebulosity surrounding it. There is a very very faint sign of the small Crescent nebula but it's really so faint that it took me 10 minutes and some star charts just to find its trace, it looks like a transparent oval something twice the size of Sadr directly up and right of it. The third bright star on the lower right is Gienah and the two cyan wisps of nebulosity to its right are parts of the elusive Veil nebula, a supernova remnant. The bunch of stars on the right edge of the frame is the open cluster NGC 6940. There's also M29 but it just looks like an odd shaped star right of Sadr.

And here's the Omega and the Eagle nebula (left and right respectively) at 300mm and 134 minutes of total exposure. Image is rotated 90° to the right from how it looks from northern latitudes.

And an altered crop of the above image showing the famous pillars of creation in the eagle nebula. I'm glad it shows since I didn't expect it as it's really very small and I thought I'd need a proper scope.

IC 59 and IC 63, faint nebulae around Gamma Cassiopeiae, which is the star in the central tip of the W shape of the constellation Cassiopeia. This is a very difficult object and a test of sorts of the limits of my abilities with this equipment. Not very good but they show at least, though the lower one should be red but I apparently didn't capture the color with only 2 minute sub exposures that I did. This is 4 hours total exposure, I may add more to it. Color balance sucks, space isn't green. This is shot at 300mm.

Probably my finest photo so far.

Andromeda Galaxy at 250mm, two and a half hours of exposure at 250mm. Its smaller satellite galaxies M32 and M110 are also visible.

Looking towards the center of the Milky Way in the constellation Sagittarius. Only an hour exposure at 50mm. Lots and lots of dark nebulae, the most prominent being the huge Dark Horse nebula on the right (which is actually made of several smaller and separated nebulae). The Lagoon nebula is the purple thing in "the rift", Trifid nebula is seen right above it, as well as lots of star clusters dotting the image. Finally, M24 aka the Small Sagittarius Star Cloud is the white bunch of stars at the left edge of the image, while the so called Great Sagittarius Star Cloud is the brightest part of the Milky Way at the bottom left of the image, it's actually a window through the vast dust lanes of the Milky Way towards the center of the galaxy most densely packed with stars, hence why it's so bright.

45 minutes of Lagoon nebula (big one) and Trifid nebula (small one), (both are visible in the above picture) M21 open cluster (left above Trifid) and open cluster NGC 6544 in the lower left corner. There's a lot of stars here because it's looking near towards the center of the Milky Way. The stars at the edges are warped because this lens has crappy optics, should have stopped it down further. This is at 300mm.

Antares (star in center) M4 globular cluster to the right, and the lower part of Rho Ophiuchus Cloud Complex, a large dark nebula, in the upper part of the picture. (this is just to the right of the Dark horse nebula two images up)

This one is horribly underexposed with only 17 minutes worth of exposure, and I post-processed a bit too much to brinh out the dark cloud and then brought up the noise level as well, then had to overdo with noise reduction so yeah. It looks ok if you don't look too closely.

I plan to do this one again properly with more than an hour of exposure to bring out the colorful eye candy that is abundant in this region. Will have to wait for the next summer though, as this will not be visible until then.

Crop of Antares, M4 and a more distant globular cluster NGC 6144 (between and above the former two) from the above photo (with less noise reduction).

And more galaxies. M81 (left) and M82 (right), along with three more members of the "M81 group": NGC 3077 (left above from M81), NGC 2976 (lower left corner) and NGC 2959 (very very faint, near the bottom of the image just left from the center, below and to the left of the six small stars in a vertical row). At 300mm, only an hour exposure and needs lots more to bring out the blueish color of M81 and reddish detail on M82. I'm keeping the raw files I have so will just add to them when I take more photos.

Image of the Double Cluster and the Heart and Soul nebula at 50mm ruined by horrible light pollution from a fishing ship that created a light dome with its lights the size of a small city. Had to aggressively post-process to get rid of the LP and get the nebulae out. Will be better next time.

The rig in action

[Sid]

Love them...lots to take in, I need to brush up on my constellations.

Well done. Like the picture of the rig too

[Snacko]

I am amazed at the shots you got with just your camera. Nice job Rox!!

[Sweper]

Very nice Rox! Thanks for posting.