Astronomy and DSLR Astrophotography Blog » landscape

Bolid and timelapse

admin — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 18:31:11 +0000

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!

Observing Perseid meteor shower

admin — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 13:33:06 +0000

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

Beautiful landscape in moonlight

admin — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 16:20:34 +0000

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

Astrophotography for beginners: Star trails

admin — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 18:17:45 +0000

I still remember my beginnings in astrophotography some years ago. I joined some astrophotography forums and admired the pictures some masters were taking. I didn’t have a telescope, a mount or any other equipment. I had just a Canon 3000N camera and kit lens.

Many of you would say that with this equipment astrophotograhy is just impossible. But this is not true! I have spent a lot of time capturing the moon with my very first telescope (60/700 Meade) and the star trails. The pictures was often useless but I have learned a lot for my progress.

I have been searching a lot to find the first picture of star trails I managed to take but I haven’t found it. So I can show you the one I have made 2 months ago:

Star trails @ Primož Cigler

For image like this you don’t need any special equipment. Almost every digital or analog camera for daylight photography is ok. Everything that is obligatory is a stable tripod where we attach the camera and remote control for expositions is useful too.

Analog cameras are more suitable for this type of astrophotography because they don’t have a digital noise. Exposition can last as long as we want and that don’t influence on image quality. We just set the length of exposition (usually between 30min and 3 hours), the field of camera (usually to the widest) and start the exposition. We generally use low ISO speed for capturing star trails – ISO100, ISO200, ISO400, rarely more. The length of exposition, ISO speed and aperture depend from the conditions, especially from light pollution. The more light pollution we have, lower ISO speed we should use and take shorter exposition.

If we use digital camera the process is little different. As I mentioned the digital cameras have a digital noise which grows as the length of exposure. To avoid this problem we take a set of continuous shots one after another where single show is long from 1 to 3 minutes. It’s important that between exposures in no more than 5 s of pause and that we don’t move the camera all the time during the exposures. At the end we also make a dark-frame (we cover the lens of the camera with a cap and make the “dark picture” just the same length and with the same settings as all the other pictures before), which we be needed after at processing.
If we done everything ok then processing is just the easiest part. We just download this software called Startrails and combine all the pictures. That’s all!

I hope that this article/post will help someone to start with astrophotography. Star trail can be really beautiful, just give them a chance!