27th October AstroPhoMo (Astro Photo Month)

An addition of  2 times magnification with a Barlow made the world of difference with it filling the field of view of the camera just nicely.

28th October AstroPhoMo (Astro Photo Month)

This quick unguided portrait of 47 Tucanae is pretty much just for the sake of a daily post.   Very mucky skies and not anywhere near the October 12 version .

26th October 2012 AstroPhoMo (Astro Photo Month)

Today cloudy again but clear enough for another look at the Moon.   Day 11 now with three days to go to the full moon.  Mare Imbrium along with Sinus Iridium now fully visible along with much of the crater spray from Tycho.

This next version has less contrast between the lunar mare (dark patches) and the surrounding terrain but highlights more detail along the terminator. Some of the brighter areas are a tad over saturated too.

October 25th AstroPhoMo (Astro Photo Month)

A break in the clouds last night brought a waxing gibbous.

October 22nd 2012 AstroPhoMo (Astro Photo Month)

Took this shot of the quarter moon after coming home from an evening shift at work, 3 pm to 11 pm.    Time was limited so I grabbed my 70mm William Optics refractor and plunked it on a camera tripod and quickly put the 300D into prime focus.   After focusing and then experimenting with exposures I settled on 1/200th second at 200 ISO.  I then took 7 shots and then stacked and processed then in Nebulosity.

October 20th AstroPhoMo (Astro Photo Month)

I missed the opportunity to capture anything on the 19th due to an astronomy teaching commitment.  However last night's icy clouds and waxing crescent provided a lunar halo.

 To the left of the halo you should just make out the constellation Scorpius, with the tail and the stinger (Shaula and Lesuth) fairly prominent.  To the right the bright star is Altair in the constellation Aquila.
The star just off the lunar limb is Mu Sagittarius at 3.8 mag .

15th to 18th October 2012 AstroPhoMo (Astro Photo Month)

Weather and Work have intervened the pas couple of days but I still have a 16th October South Celestial Pole time lapse sequence and a shot of a light polluted eastern horizon at dusk.

The actual naked eye view wasn't nearly as spectacular with there only being just a faint red hue.   The sensitivity of the camera does wonders to these hints of colour only just detectable to us.

14th October AstroPhoMo (Astro Photo Month)

Backyard time lapse sequence taken in my backyard at Blackstone Heights in Tasmania.  Not sure but there might be just a hint of an aurora in the left hand corner of the image nearer to the end of the sequence.  Also near the end a fairly bright object most likely a plane.

The main features astronomically speaking is Scorpius front and center with the Milky Way spread across the field of view.

It was a challenge setting the exposures etc. for this day to night sequence to get a consistent dimming across the frames but I manged to somewhat achieve this by letting the camera initially dictate the length of exposure and then once this was approaching 15 seconds I switched to full manual control during the darker end of twilight and then ramping the exposure times up to 30 seconds once the full darkness had set in.  In the end any marked variance in the shots I post processed out as much as possible adjusting the light curves in each shot to compensate for the varying sensitivity of the camera.

       

13th October 2012 AstroPhoMo (Astro Photo Month)

Finally snagged a shot of the Trifid and Lagoon Nebulae in Sagittarius.  I've been chasing this all week but up till now have found that when I get out and organised they have set too far to the west behind some tree branches surrounding my viewing site.   This image is made of three frames from about thirty unguided shots. There was too much movement in the other frames.

Thankfully the using the highest ISO available to me (1600) to maximize the sensitivity of the shot in the short time of 30 the second frames has provided some good detail despite it only amounting to a minute and a half of exposure in total in the three frames used.

I really love these two nebulae and how you can combine them in the one shot.   You can see the very striking trification of the dark lanes in the smaller "Trifid" Nebula to the right of the image. Also note the very vibrant open star cluster contained within the Lagoon Nebula on the left of the image.

I think best estimates put the Lagoon Nebula at 4000 light years in distance.

12th October 2012 AstroPhoMo (AstroPhotoMonth)

I have been spending a lot of time getting better accuracy with the polar alignment of my EQ6 mount.

I revisited NGC104 / 47 Tucanae which I imaged earlier in the month with a simple Meade DSI CCD web style camera.   This one was captured with a modified Canon 350D DSLR.

I took this from 6 out of ten 1 minute frames which I stacked and post processed in Nebulosity.

11th October 2012 AstroPhoMo (Astro Photo Month)

Had another go today imaging the sun this time with the DSI Colour CCD.  After consulting an Ice in Space thread from last year discussing CCD imaging with a Coranado PST, I got a better feel for exposure times and how to use a laptop screen outside in the day (i.e. put a tarp or blanket over you and the screen).   Consequently I've spent a good part of the afternoon under the blue tarp that usually covers my telescope when I'm not using it.

The image is made of 10 x 1/250 sec frames with flats.   As the subject matter is so bright all the smudges and dust on the ccd show up too.  The flat basically subtracts these out of the final picture.