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Astrophotography Revisited

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Jim Rucker

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Been a long time since my astro days, but my wife got into my old photo albums of various objects and put together an 11x14 montage of my best of the best and had it framed. Awesome I thought. Looked better than I remembered when mounted this way. Here's what it looks like. Used lots of different scopes, cameras, and 1000's of wasted film getting these. Just wanted to share.

 
Where do you live? I can see really "clear skys" :) and why did you stop. These photos are very good.

Regards, swnw.
 
Jim Rucker said:
Been a long time since my astro days, but my wife got into my old
photo albums of various objects and put together an 11x14 montage
of my best of the best and had it framed. Awesome I thought. Looked
better than I remembered when mounted this way. Here's what it
looks like. Used lots of different scopes, cameras, and 1000's of
wasted film getting these. Just wanted to share.

Click to expand...
Very nice Jim, beautiful shots all of them.
What's your equipment and what's the technique?
You should actually start again :o)
Thanks for sharing.

--
Denny - A620 A70 FinePixA110
http://majestixblue.fotopic.net/
 
I lived north of Columbus, OH. Not really great skies, but light polution filters can work wonders. Most were taken with the old Konica 3200 film. Pretty grainy, but great reciprocity, and it can be worked with. Or Fuji 800. Scopes were mostly Cassegrain 2000mm focal length with f/6.3 reducer. About 1200mm effective. Or my beautiful 6-inch Astro-Physics refractor. The planets were taken with 2000mm focal length with eyepiece inserted in line. You can achieve effective focal lengths up to 20,000mm and more this way. Very difficult to get right, though. Most of the deep-sky objects were 30 minutes to 1 hour exposures and back then I had to guide by hand. ( I had no autoguider ) The scope tracked okay by itself, but you need to guide manual to make up for any slight discrepancies in the motor drive, otherwise you get blurry stars, etc. Moved back to town, so had to drop the hobby.

Jim
swnw said:
Where do you live? I can see really "clear skys" :) and why did you
stop. These photos are very good.

Regards, swnw.
Click to expand...
 
I perfectly understand you there's no "clear skies" in town. I like astronomy but I live in town too and from year to year is getting worse. I can see something ten years ago because live on the edge of town but now only bright stars and after strong wind something more.
But I still think that your pics are very good.

Besr regards, swnw.
 
They are good. So good that it's hard for me to believe you made them with your own equipment. But if you say you did, then I will take your word for it.

I never got past grinding my own 6" dia. lens in my telescope making. Also I never could afford the good telescopes that are on the market.
--
Artist Eyes
 
If you could see what the expert guys up here in Ohio were producing, mine would take last place. I think they look better than they really are because they were reduced down so small to fit them all in the frame. Blown up you can see how noisy they really are. But I think your disbelief is the best compliment. Most of these were taken with a 20 year old Celestron 8-inch. I think it was only $700, but great for astro work because it was a fast f/6.3.

Jim
Peter Nelson said:
They are good. So good that it's hard for me to believe you made
them with your own equipment. But if you say you did, then I will
take your word for it.

I never got past grinding my own 6" dia. lens in my telescope
making. Also I never could afford the good telescopes that are on
the market.
--
Artist Eyes
Click to expand...
 
Hi Jim:

Your images are very nice for a digital SLR, but are not a good representations of the colors found in these object. The camera appears to be very weak in the green and somewhat so in the blue. This is especially evident in the Veil and Horsehead region.

Michael Stecker
http://mstecker.com
 
None of these were from digital. There weren't any digital cameras back then. Different films portray these regions differently. Although, most of the professional pictures of the Horsehead and Veil are almost all red. I've only seen a few with green ( a curse for astronomers ) Most of todays films tend to favor these objects as green, very few have good red sensitivity, which is the correct color for these nebulas, hence the name for their classification as red nebulas. Here's a couple pics from the pros out of one of my old astro books.



Jim
Michael Stecker said:
Hi Jim:
Your images are very nice for a digital SLR, but are not a good
representations of the colors found in these object. The camera
appears to be very weak in the green and somewhat so in the blue.
This is especially evident in the Veil and Horsehead region.

Michael Stecker
http://mstecker.com
Click to expand...
 
These are wonderful. It must be very rewarding, too.

But here's my question.

If the very distant and very faint objects are so well resolved why do Saturn and Jupiter look so blurry by comparison?

I'd think that objects within the solar system, being very much closer, would be an easier target.

Thanks!
--
Cheers,
Joe
 
Although they are closer, they are much smaller in size, or projected area. Hence, they need to be magnified much more than the nebulas, which often are very large, sometimes larger than the moon in apparent size. These particular views of Jupiter and Saturn were taken at focal lengths of around 40,000mm, so even the slightest atmospheric turbulence, or thermal disturbances are easily detected and can make these objects extremely difficult. Some of the real pros take hundreds of images via digital cameras, then stack and massage to get extremely high resolution images.
Joe Mondello said:
These are wonderful. It must be very rewarding, too.

But here's my question.

If the very distant and very faint objects are so well resolved why
do Saturn and Jupiter look so blurry by comparison?

I'd think that objects within the solar system, being very much
closer, would be an easier target.

Thanks!
--
Cheers,
Joe
Click to expand...
 
Jim Rucker said:
Although they are closer, they are much smaller in size, or
projected area. Hence, they need to be magnified much more than the
nebulas, which often are very large, sometimes larger than the moon
in apparent size.
Click to expand...
I was recently very surprised by the following composite picture...

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap061228.html

Although we're all used to seeing pictures of dim and distant astronomical features, very few of us have actually made observations ourselves and understand the relative sizes of the features being observed. So this came as a real surprise to me and changed the way I see the night sky.

Anyway, those are great picures Jim. Thanks for sharing them... and for reminding me again how much I'd like to live somewhere where the sky at night is really dark, rather than sodium-lit.

Andrew McP
 
Andrew McP said:
Jim Rucker said:
Although they are closer, they are much smaller in size, or
projected area. Hence, they need to be magnified much more than the
nebulas, which often are very large, sometimes larger than the moon
in apparent size.
Click to expand...
I was recently very surprised by the following composite picture...

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap061228.html

Although we're all used to seeing pictures of dim and distant
astronomical features, very few of us have actually made
observations ourselves and understand the relative sizes of the
features being observed. So this came as a real surprise to me
and changed the way I see the night sky.

Anyway, those are great picures Jim. Thanks for sharing them... and
for reminding me again how much I'd like to live somewhere where
the sky at night is really dark, rather than sodium-lit.

Andrew McP
Click to expand...
WOW.

Thanks, Jim for the explanation. I've seen Jupiter and Saturn through a 5" reflector and can appreciate the images you were able to get.

I've also seen M31 through 10x binoculars and find the NASA composite UNBELIEVABLE!

Seriously, I don't believe it! hehe I guess they know what they are talking about, but you gotta admit it is pretty incredible. ;-)

--
Cheers,
Joe
 
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