Astrophotography

Do you have a question related to astronomy or astrophotography? Contact me and I'll do my best to help you!

I think it’s not right always showing just the best works you produce. Sometimes it’s also good to represent worse pictures to show the world you also have troubles with everything and to encourage those who are not so good at astrophotography yet. I had a disaster last Thursday, capturing the Rho Ophiuchi region.

Last week we had some clear skies out here and on Thursday I decided to go to the near hill named Bohor to caputre the Rho Ophiuchi region, which is a large cloud of colorful nebulas, a part of Milky Way. June is the only month when this region is accessible to photograph from our latitude because it comes the highest on the night sky – about 20 degrees. Se we had clear skies, warm weather, no moon – perfect astrophotography conditions. I packed my mount Vixen GP-DX with SkySensor 2000 PC to the case with all the accessories and went to the Bohor to take some shots. I arrived there 2 hours before the astronomic night, prepared everything, aligned the mount, focused my modified Canon 350D with Canon 70-200 f/4.0 IS L lens and waited for the night. I started shooting at 23.45 LT. After first two shots I saw that everything works OK and went into the car, watching a movie for two hours. When  the film finished I was planning to take some darks and then to go home but when I checked the destination folder for images on my laptop I immediately noticed that something had gone wrong – THERE WERE JUST 6 PICTURES!!! OMG, I was awake till 4 a. m., getting just 6 frames. There was noting else to do, I had about half and hour till the dawn so I packed up the mount and everything and went home.

Nevertheless, on Sunday I decided give it a try and I processed the image. Honestly, I suspected to be worse, but it’s far from that I was planning to do. So here you have, Rho Ophiuchi nebula, not so perfect:

 

I hope that next time I will show something more attractive. And which are yours most common troubles you are dealing with?

Thanks for reading!

astrophotography, personal astrophotography, canon, deep-sky, images, milky way, nebula, stars

Yesterday evening it was clear outside and the Moon was rising at about 1.30 so I had 2 hours of total dark and this is enough for testing the new autoguiding camera QHY5. The target was M51, the second time. While I was deciding what to capture I realized that I will have to move to better location since from my backyard the southern sky is totally useless because of road lamps.

I managed to make a new cable for QHY5 so now it works with SkySensor autoguiding port. With that I decreased the number of cables from laptop to my mount from 5 to 3. Now I need only USB connection between PC and Camera, Bulb shutter release cable and USB connection with QHY5, which is great. I am planning to buy a new CCD for astrophotography so after that I will need only 2 cables. No more mess around the scope, finally!

So, I have just processed the image, the result is shown below:

 

I have also taken a shot of my equipment, at the “working” state

astrophotography, equipment astrophotography, autoguiding, camera, deep-sky, equipment, galaxy, images, mount, telescope

Finally I have more time. The exams are almost finished so I have three months of holidays now and I hope that I will take some good astrophotos in this time and post it here. I will also continue with Astrophotography Tutorial but for today I have prepared something more fresh. The last week I have ordered new autoguiding camera for my setup. The previous one, Atik ATK-2HS, was not mine actually so I decided to buy the new one. I have ordered QHY5 from UK, the astronomy store named Modern Astronomy. The shipment to Slovenia costed only 10 pounds and it took only 4 days to arrive.

The first impression was very positive! Even though it is “made in China” it looks very well designed and made. The build quality is on very high level. It is not plastic like Atik, but metallic. The original package comes with camera, T-2 to 1,25″ nosepiece adapter, USB cable and setup instructions. I have also ordered RJ-11 cable for direct autoguiding via camera.

I got impressed when I unscrewed the nosepiece because of the size of the CCD. It seems really huge comparing to tiny CCD detectors in webcams (Atik ATK-2HS also uses ordinary 640×480 one). The resolution is 1280 x 1024, more specification are available at the QHY website.

The best thing is that QHY5 has T-2 thread which perfectly fits to my autoguiding telescope so I can just screw it on.

As you can notice it has two ports in the back side. One is USB 2.0 port for connection with the computer and another is ST-4 compatible autoguiding port for direct connection with the mount. I am using Vixen SkySensor hand-controller and I though that it is compatible but in fact it isn’t, because Vixen uses it’s own standard for autoguding. The connector is the same but wires are connected differently so today I am going to make a new cable. The camera has also build-in red LED diode which is too bright and could be disturbing in a completely dark so I pasted a black stripe over it.

The camera comes with one A4 paper sheet of instructions how to setup. The drivers are not included, you have to download it from the Modern Astronomy site. The setup is really simple, you just install the generic driver and plug in the camera. Then you have to install additional driver for the autoguiding software you are using, in my case Guidemaster. All the main autoguiding software are supported, including ASCOM platform.

To sum up, I am very satisfied with the purchase. Two days ago I had a first light and everything worked fine. I was planning to capture M102 but ended with just 2 pictures because it clouded. This is 100% crop of one of them as a proof that camera guides OK:

I hope you enjoyed the review. If you have any questions don’t hesitate to ask under the comments

equipment, reviews astrophotography, autoguiding, camera, equipment, guide, mount, review, telescope

I haven’t been writing here for a while. Currently I am studying for my exams … but just one month left. Then I will continue with astrophotography tutorial. Nevertheless, I managed to take photography of galaxy M86 and neighbours last weekend. The picture was caputred with my standard setup: Orion Optics 8″ f/4.5, modded Canon 350D with IDAS LPS P2 filter at ISO 800, RAW on Vixen GP-DX mount. The photography is composition of 30 images, each of 5min. I was capturing from the backyard in front of a house where is a lot of light pollution.

I am very satisfied with the result because I have spent some nights outside recently without any useful pictures, because autoguiding wasnt’ working properly. I had to change some settings and now works again.

astrophotography astrophotography, deep-sky, galaxy, idas, images, messier, stars

I haven’t been writing for a while now because I had so much stuff to do. This year I am finishing my secondary school and I am already preparing for the exams. Nevertheless, I haven’t been so passive at astrophotography. I have to admin that drive for my mount was damaged since summer and I hadn’t been capturing astrophotos for a half of the year. A friend of mine repaired it last month so I ordered some other cool stuff to upgrade it: I changed the holder of secondary mirror (spider) and mounted new rings for guidescope.

Yesterday I calibrated system again and did this shot of NGC2403 galaxy in Camelopardalis:

It’s composition of 26 exposures, each of 5min on ISO800 with Baader modified Canon 350D and IDAS LPS P2 filter. The mount was Vixen GP-DX with SkySensor 2000PC and the telescope Orion Optics Europe 8″ f/4.5. I processed image with Iris, Photoshop and Lightroom. It’s not my the best image of this object, but I am satisfied with a result because it’s a proof that everything is OK with the mount.

My Astrophotography tutorial will be continued as soon as I find more time.

Clear Skies!

astrophotography, personal astrophotography, deep-sky, galaxy, images, mount, telescope

In this part we’ll take a look at some telescope specifications. It’ pretty common question what’s the best telescope for astrophotography. The answer? Such a telescope doesn’t exsist. There are several different telescopes available on the market and every serves its own purpose.

The Newtonians, for example, are very handy and good instruments for astrophotography, though they need to be collimated very precisely and often. On the other hand ED and APO refractors are better, but they are much more expensive. The SCTs are compact and provides longer focal lengths but they are rarely well-made.
So the question is what telescope to choose for deep-sky astrophotography with DSLR camera?

There are several different answers, depending on our object to be captured. Let’s start with the largest: wide-field images of the sky. If you are planning to capture the wide-field images of the night sky you don’t need the telescope but the lens. This is because telescopes are optical instruments with longer focal lengths and that means smaller field of view (FOV) whereas the lenses has a really wide range of focal lengths, from 4mm up to 1200mm and more. The most common target in this range of objects is the Milky Way. This kind of astrophotography is especially appropriate for beginners because the auto-guiding is not necessary and most of the cameras already comes with “kit” lenses which have wide field of view.
One of my images of Milky Way in Cygnus taken with 50mm lens:

Next step are large deep-sky objects. For this objects I recommend the middle-sized APO and ED refractors (80-120mm) or telephoto-lenses. If we have a good mount we still don’t need auto-guiding at this focal length but in most cases it’s better to use it if possible. The most common objects in this range are constellations, detailed locations of Milky Way, large nebula complexes (Orion) and bright comets. The next picture represents Comet Holmes as it was seen 8th January, 2008, taken with Canon EF 70-200 f/4.0 lens:

Next are middle-sized deep-sky objects. The best focal lengths for them are from 1000 mm to 2000 mm. Newton telescopes and larger refractors has the most appropriate specifications for imaging this type of objects. The auto-guiding is really necessary here because just the best mounts can slew accurate enough to assure the pin-point stars at these magnifications. In this range we find almost all the object from Messier’s catalogue and the brightest NGCs. One of my pictures taken with Orion Optics Europa 8″ f/4.5 are Pleiades.

The last type of object, accessible to amateur astrophotographers, are smaller deep-sky object. They are mostly galaxies and planetary nebulas. Because they are small, we need long focal length to capture the details inside them. The SCTs and other catadioptric telescopes are the most appropriate for these objects.

So, now you know which objects are in the range of your equipment. I hope that you enjoyed reading.

astrophotography APO, astrophotography, camera, deep-sky, images, mount, nebula, telescope, tutorial

So let’s continue with the tutorial. The last time we have chosen the object. Today we will take a look at some common camera settings for astrophotography. In this tutorial I will be using modified Canon Rebel XT (350D). Modified means that I have replaced original filter in front of CMOS sensor with replacement filter of Baader. I have listed some good guides how to do it here.

Let’s go back to the topic. The camera is important piece of equipment since it’s capturing the light. Not all the cameras preforms the same but there are some common setting that it’s good to setup before we go out under the stars.

The very first thing is the photography mode of the camera. Here we have just one choice – M (Manual) mode because of one simple reason: DSLRs are not meant to be astrophotography cameras but daylight cameras. So the longest exposition that automatic modes enables us it’s 30s. But that’s far not enough for deep-sky astrophotography. We need longer exposures and the M mode has a “bulb mode”. That means that the exposition is as long as the shutter is pressed on a camera. Of course, we cannot hold the button on a camera for 5 minutes so the wire trigger is necessary.

The second thing is mirror lockup. Almost all the DSLRs enables lockup function. Mirror lockup means that the mirror in the camera, which reflects light to the viewfinder, locks up some seconds before the start of exposition. And why is that so important? Because if you are using telescope with long focal length, then every single tiny movement is noticeable on a picture. And when the mirror “jumps up” it shakes the system and bright stars get tails and that’s what we obiously don’t want to have on the pictures. So the mirror lockup function triggers the mirror some seconds before the start of exposition so the system can settle down before the exposition is started.

Next important thing is ISO speed. This one is still a hot topic among astrophotographers since some claims that lower ISO is better and others who prefers higher ISO settings. Anyway, two years ago I have made a test on Youth Astronomy Camp which revealed that Rebel XT preforms the best at ISO 800.

For additional processing it’s the best that we use uncompressed data so the RAW mode is the right decision. If you prefer having JPGs also, then you can select RAW + JPG.

Another not so important thing is LCD brightness. I strongly recommend to set this as low as possible because in the night our eyes are adapted to the dark and if you want to check for example the sharpness of the images on LCD with the full brightness then you’ll get blind for some minutes.

The last but not the least function is information LCD illumination. This function enables you to see the settings specified in the dark. Just press the button.

Thank you for reading. So far we have chosen the object and specified all the camera settings.

astrophotography astrophotography, camera, canon, deep-sky, equipment, guide, rebel, tutorial

The very first thing we have to do when we start an astophotography is to choose the object. We have to know what are benefits of our equipment, what we are planning to capture, what is FOV (field of view) of our telescope and camera, how “deep” our system goes and so on. Let’s take a look at some of this questions.

When we are deciding which object we will be capturing we can help ourselves with different astronomy software. They display imaginary sky and we can take a walk into nigh sky, choosing the objects, checking the rising, setting, magnitude, distance, … All this parameters are important when we are selecting the target for astrophotography.

There is a lot of different programs available on the web for astronomy. Some are free and others are paid. There are some of them:

• Starry Night
• Hallo Northern Sky
• Cartes du Ciel
• SkyMap
• Stellarium

In this tutorial I will be using Starry Night. It is paid but it offers endless of useful options like FOV and has  really a huge database of objects.

First of all we have to know what type of object is appropriate for our astrophotography setup. The predispositions for deep-sky astrophotography are:

• Telescope of telephoto lens
• Mount for tracking that tracks very accurate (under 2″ of error) or has option of auto-guiding
• DSLR or CCS camera with remote control of exposition

In Starry Night we put the parameters in the the section Equipment:

Then we select FOV of our telescope and camera. The program displays us the rectangle that out astrophotography setup “sees”.

So, what’s next? We have to choose the target that we are going to capture. Here are some basic directives:

• Make sure that object is in the field of view at least 3 hours in the total darkness. It has to be at least 15-20° above the horizon all the time of the capturing. Make sure that you have specified your date/time and location accurately!
• Make sure that object roughly fits to the field of your telescope’s view. The rectangle that we have specified before helps us at this step. Make sure that it is not too small – it doesn’t make any sense if you are photographing a very small planetary nebula at 600mm of focal length.
• Make sure that it is not too dim. Almost all the objects from Messier catalogue are OK, and all the bright objects from NGC makes good target as well. If the object is dimmer than 10th magnitude then bigger telescope then 8″ is recommended.
• If you don’t have GoTo or it’s unreliable then make sure that you are able to find the object in the night sky. Help yourself with bright stars, print the carts out.
• If you are using german equatorial mount then make sure that object doesn’t pass the meridian during the planned time of capturing.

Some good objects to start with: M45 (Pleiades), M42 (Orion Nebula), M44 (Beehive Cluster), M27 (Dumbbell Nebula), NGC7000 (North American Nebula), M31 (Andromeda). They are all bright and easy to find even with binoculars.

And here we are. We have the object.

Next time we will take a look at the conditions in the athmosphere that affects to the astrophotography – the weather, seeing, transparency and more.

astrophotography astronomy, astrophotography, camera, deep-sky, equipment, guide, mount, telescope, tutorial

I have decided to publish step-by-step how-to tutorial for astrophotography beginners. It’s International Year of Astronomy and I am pretty sure that there is a lot of people who are interested in astronomy and astrophotography, but they don’t know where to start.

Weekly I will publish articles guiding you trough the process of astrophotography – from equipment to the imaging tips and processing of images on the computer. Each article will cover specific part and every single of them is important for good results.

There are several different types of objects up there and they require different type of equipment, capturing, processing. In this tutorial I will focus on deep-sky astrophotography with DSLR camera and with amateur equipment in range up to 5.000$. If you are beginner – don’t be afraid! There is a possibility to start astrophotography with much lower budget and get stunning results. You just need to be patient and don’t give up.

Contents:

• Part I: Choosing an Object
• Part II: Camera Settings
• Part III: The Telescope

Don’t forget that we all learn from mistakes. With patience and enthusiasm everything is possible. Enjoy the Universe and Clear Skies!

astrophotography astronomy, astrophotography, deep-sky, equipment, guide, images, milky way, nebula, stars, tutorial

There days I have too much stuff in school so I can’t write as often as I want to. I’ll continue this week-end.
There are some hot topics coming:

• Autoguiding
• Best-buy mount under 2000$
• Video tutorial: Processing astrophotos
• Camera settings for astrophotography
• Review of Vixen GP-DX mount
• Review of Canon EF 70-200L f/4.0 IS lens
• Review of Orion Optics Europa 8″
• How to use a laser colimator
• … and much more so stay tuned!

Clear Skies!

personal