some jewels of the night sky

[Big V]

Last night was a good night for astronomy, so out with the camera again..
these were 10 minute exposures with the canon 300d hanging of a telescope...

first one is a galaxy, these contain 200 billion stars..


next one is a nebula,


last one is a globular cluster around a milliom stars in this one..

[fozzie]

Images and colours are absolutely amazing

Truly spectacular shooting Big V.

[stubbsy]

Awesome Virgs. Reminds me just how tiny this little planet of ours really is.

[Dug]

And we earthlings are still fighting over a few square miles of dirt.

It really puts things in perspective.

[optogamut]

I agree with the others, great shots!

Knowing nothing about astonomy or telescopes however, could you describe the telescope? Is it huge?

[avkomp]

great shots,

keep em coming.

Steve

[mic]

I don't think these could be just a camera hanging off a scope

If this is what you are saying that you have a 300d mounted on your telescope and these are the images that you are producing.

Hmmmm I think not

Please explain Dr Spock.

They are great images, but I think not straight out of a camera.

Mic.

[marcotrov]

You are a master of these astrological images Big V Colourful beautifully exposed and always interesting.
cheers
marco

[Big V]

Mic, yes these are taken the way described..camera attached to the scope, so the scope becomes the lens. The telescope then tracks the motion of the stars, allowing the long exposure.. here are a few more for steve..

this comet, whilst nothing special has fragmented into 34 bits already and may be naked eye by early may..if we are lucky we might be able to see 2 or 3 of the fragments at the same time with the naked eye. Gordon will know about this..



another nebula..


You need to undestand that with long exposure photography, you bring out alot of detail but and this is a big but you need to track the motion accurately so that there is no trailing of the stars etc in the image. To do this I use a webcam on a smaller scope and it acts as a guider to send messages to the motors telling them how much to compensate for the movement. All good stuff when you get it to work!!

[sirhc55]

Excellent Big V - I can just see someone on a far off galaxy with a Cinnin D4to the fifth power taking a pic of little ole us

[NikonUser]

Totally amazing.

I love your work!!

Paul

[Big V]

optogamut, the mirror of the telescope is 50cm so yes it is classified as a large scope but you can achieve similiar results with smaller sizes, you just need to expose for longer

[mark]

Wow, striking images. I really like the nebula in the 2nd picture.

Now about that workshop

Mark

[Gordon]

...
this comet, whilst nothing special has fragmented into 34 bits already and may be naked eye by early may..if we are lucky we might be able to see 2 or 3 of the fragments at the same time with the naked eye. Gordon will know about this..

nice work BigV.. using the Stockport scope?


I got some quite nice images of 73P in late 1995 I think it was, around when it began to break up and became easily visible to the naked eye. Lots of people who weren't up to date on its behaviour thought they had found a new comet back then.

As BigV says it *might* be naked eye visible in mid-May, but using a pair of binoculars or telescope will give a much better view. Of course you will need a dark sky well away from city light pollution, and also no bright Moon in the sky.
You will also need to get up before sunrise and know exactly where to look. Full Moon on May 13th is right around the time the comet is expected to be brightest, and comets being diffuse, it will not be readily visible to the naked eye around then, so best to try and spot it before morning twilight and after moonset a few days before FM.

I'll be in Alice Springs for a 7 day staged mountain bike race then, so probably wont get much of a look in when it is at its brightest.

Gordon

[big pix]

great pix of the stars........ would like to see a pix of your setup......

[HappyFotographer]

Truly awesome. What an amazing branch of photography.

[mic]

WoW Big V,

I didn't mean to sound doubting, I just thought you were saying you have a camera straped to the outside of the Telescope and this is what came out.

I would love to see more detailed pics of your set up, make & model of scope and the way you acheive these brilliant images.

Thanks,

Mic.

[Laurie]

i love astronomy photos. the cluster of stars is amazing..

300 stars die every second

[gstark]

Awesome images. I especially like the second one of the nebula.

A question about your setup if I may...

but you need to track the motion accurately so that there is no trailing of the stars etc in the image. To do this I use a webcam on a smaller scope and it acts as a guider to send messages to the motors telling them how much to compensate for the movement.

I thought that, given that the earth rotates at a constant speed, there were motors and driving mechanisms that handled this sort of thing based upon that rotational speed of the earth.

What you're describing here sounds different from that, so what am I missing here?

Thanx.

[Big V]

Gary, yes that is correct for visual tracking of the sky but there are always slight imperfections in the worm drives which is known as periodic error, so if you do not correct for these, your images show the imperfections as tracking errors. Through the use of guiding these errors are corrected out by making very small movements. If we could manufacture perfect worm drives this would not be necessary and some manufactures like paramount come very close but are 20 grand. The scope I used is the stockport scope as was built locally. It has a less than perfect worm, so guiding is necessary when imaging. Hope this helps.

[gstark]

Many thanx for the clarification. Yes, it helps a lot.

[Big V]

Ok here are some pics of the setup with the main two that I image with

First one is the big scope - used for taking narrow view images, all the images in this post were taken through this scope..

this is the building that it lives in


This is the widefield scope, this is a portable setup and is good because it can be taken anywhere - runs off a small generator..
The blue scope is the imaging scope and the white one is the guiding scope.

[NikonUser]

Makes my 500 f4 feel a little inadequate

Paul

[Big V]

Paul, the focal length of the big scope is 2000mm when using the newtonian arrangement - this means hanging the camera off the top eye piece but when using the bottom it is 4000mm but this is so much magnification it is really only good for planets.. the blue scope is a 500mm. I also have a 1000mm scope that I use - all the different lengths are used on different objects in the sky because some are small and some are large..
Here is the 1000mm one..

[Willy wombat]

Fantastic stuff. It makes no sense to me but i love looking at these images (feel privilaged to be viewing them given the setup).

Cheers
Steve

[Manta]

:shock:
Makes my 500 f4 feel a little inadequate

Paul

I'd be happy to take it off your hands, Paul, if it's really disturbing you...

Great pictures BigV. Obviously a labour of love.

[BBJ]

Tony, you have excelled yourself again and well great shots but i thought they might have been dust bunnies. Oh that right you have cleaned it now, oh well good stuff as usual and interesting.

[mic]

WoW Big V,

Now I know why you get these shots

I would be interested if you could post more pics of the Planets.

That is some serious hobby you have there.

Great stuff.

Mic

[Big V]

Mic, here is one of Mars..when imaging planets, most of us use a webcam and take an avi of it. You then go through and pick out the best frames and make your final image from that. The reason we use webcams is two-fold. 1. planets are really small and a large ccd chip is a waste of space and 2 the atmosphere is very turbulent, so by taking lots of images over a short period of time you can normally get a few where the seeing was steady. Just a note, when the stars are twinkling that is bad for astrophotgraphy because it means the atmosphere is really moving around. To take good images means normally waiting till at least 11 so the atmosphere has had time to settle down from the days heating..

[Big V]

Just to give you an idea of how small the planets are here is a picture of the sun with the planet venus transiting in front of it. As you can see if you use a slr for planets, you end up with a lot of wasted space..

[mic]

Thanks Big V,

These are very interesting, I'm a big Astronomy buff but only in my 5 mins of spare time. I used to have a 4 inch Refractor when I was sixteen and used to stay out most of the night drawing, dreaming & just being in absolute awe of the heavens.

Thanks for posting these.

Cheers,

Mic.

[Big V]

Here is a pic of the fragmenting comet..not the best because I could not guide on the comet as it was too faint.

[mic]

Excellent Big V,

Amazing to see such a visitor thats been around so much, if only it could tell of it's tales it has seen out there.

Cheers,

Mic.

[Big V]

Mic, the recent stardust experiment has shown that these do indeed hold a few surprises. I guess if you are 4.5 billion years old you would have a few tricks up your sleeve...