Astronomy and DSLR Astrophotography Blog

The last week I am very active, especially at night. From Thursday I already had 5 all-nighters, capturing M 31, B 334, IC 1396, NGC 7293, … and of course, the Meteors. I figured out that my backyard is just too light polluted, so now I am going capturing to the hill near me, Bohor. In the night from 24th to 25th August I made a timeplase of the night sky with me in the foreground, capturing DSOs. Unfortunately I have caught a meteor sporadic -5 magitude. The picture is so awsome, that I must share with you.

Bolid -5 mag. above me, capturing the night sky

And here is the timelapse of the entire night. I have tagged the meteor:

I admit, I am lazy and that’s why I don’t finish up my Astrophotography Tutorial. I hope that I will find more inspiration, time and will to finish it up in September, because in October I start studying Physics at Ljubljana…

The images of the objects I listed above will be published here soon. As soons as I process them

CS!

astrophotography, personal astronomy, astrophotography, images, landscape, meteors, stars

The night from 12th to 13th August turned to be a little bit better than one before. The Moon was rising later and shining less. I had more luck as well. I caught at least 6 Perseids, I am attaching the most spectacular. The brightest object  right of the meteor is Jupiter:

Perseid on 13th August 2009

I am going to observe tonight again if the weather is OK. We had some clouds yesterday after the midnight. I came home at 8.10 in the morning and I haven’t slept yet, that’s why this post is so short

personal astronomy, meteor shower, meteors, stars

I am not only deep-sky astrophotographer. Every year I take part of the biggest youth astronomy camp in Slovenia – MART. I never take telescope there, because it’s too large and I prefer observing meteors during the camp. Usually the camp lasts during the maximum of Perseids, but this year there’s a moon and it was lasting from 24th July to 2th August 2009.

Yesterday some of my friends from MART came to go to observe the Perseids. We planned to go to Bohor, which is a hill just 20 min drive from my house, but when we came to the place it overcasted. We checked the satellite images and decided to go South-West. It was a good decision. After 1-hour drive we found pretty good place to observe and started observing about at midnight. We had 6 DSLRs, capturing the Perseids as well. I haven’t got any really nice and bright meteor, like my friend did, but I ended with a timelapse of the night.

I came back to home at 6.30 and went to bed at 7.00. But today there will be another night with less moon and more Perseids. If you have an opportunity, take a walk tonight  and look up to the sky. I’m sure you will see one. My the best captured yesterday:

Perseid

personal astronomy, landscape, meteor shower, meteors, moon, stars, trails

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:

Rho Ophiuchi region @ 6 x 5min, ISO 800, RAW. Author: Primož Cigler

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

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:

Galaxy NGC2403, taken with Orion Optics Europe f/4.5 on Vixen GP-DX SS2K @ Photo Credits: Primož Cigler

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

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

A friend of mine contacted me some days ago that he bought a new telescope (Orion Optics SPX 200 f/6.0) and asked me if he could came around to collimate it. We have arranged for Saturday evening.

He really came yesterday and we did a collimation really quickly with my laser collimator. BTW, this telescope is really gorgeous! After the collimation we planned to test the optics on the stars but it clouded. We checked the weather forecast and figured out that it might be clear just some hundred meters higher so we decided to go to Bohor (that’s a hill very near where I live) and we had right! It was clear but windy night up there! The moon was rising and shining extremely bright. We could admire an “ocean” of the fog / clouds below in lowlands. It was incredibly beautiful.

Anyway the wind was too strong and I have a little cold so we stayed there just to take some photos and that was it. It was worth to drive half an hour just to admire the nature for some minutes.

View to the South-West. The brightest object is Venus. @ Primož Cigler, Nejc Ucman

View to South-East. The brightest object up-left is the Moon @ Nejc Ucman, Primož Cigler

personal earth, images, landscape, moon, stars, visual