Trying to photograph the moon.

JerseyJules · Aug 26, 2012

Kind of creepy how I started this thread and a few days later Neil Armstrong passed away..R.I.P. Mr. Armstrong, a true Pioneer!

JerseyJules · Aug 26, 2012

Aloicious said:
there are several ways to shoot through a telescope, I prefer a method called 'prime focus' which basically means you're attaching the camera body to the telescope directly and using it as the lens with a little adapter....there are other ways to do it as well, but I like prime focus method....

this is one of my telescope setups (actually the same night/setup I took that moon image with)...you can see my D800 body mounted on the back of the main (largest) telescope:

in fact, I'm not working this sunday night, if it's clear and good seeing, if it's not reserved already I may go out to the observatory and try to shoot the moon through their 3500mm f15 refractor scope...should be able to see some good detail with that...

I cant even begin toguess what a set up like that must cost..

Aloicious · Aug 26, 2012

'eh, less than you'd think...its a decent setup for casual astronomy/astrophotography, but its not super high dollar or anything. astrophotography is easily one of the most expensive genres of photography...but telescopes themselves are fairly simple in construction, much simpler than a camera lens...in fact, I'm in the process of building a couple telescopes to use for various purposes in my spare time...

if you were interested in getting some kind of telescope setup, a decent usable one could range upward from a few hundred dollars or so...just depending on what your goals were with it.

Aloicious · Aug 26, 2012

JerseyJules said:
Kind of creepy how I started this thread and a few days later Neil Armstrong passed away..R.I.P. Mr. Armstrong, a true Pioneer!

yeah, RIP Neil Armstrong, you inspired countless millions of people, myself included, and opened up a new door to discovery and exporation.

JerseyJules · Aug 26, 2012

Aloicious said:
'eh, less than you'd think...its a decent setup for casual astronomy/astrophotography, but its not super high dollar or anything. astrophotography is easily one of the most expensive genres of photography...but telescopes themselves are fairly simple in construction, much simpler than a camera lens...in fact, I'm in the process of building a couple telescopes to use for various purposes in my spare time...

if you were interested in getting some kind of telescope setup, a decent usable one could range upward from a few hundred dollars or so...just depending on what your goals were with it.

Just curious, besides the moon and your sexy neighbor lying by the pool, what else could you photograph with a telescope? i would imagine photographing stars would look like a ball of light..Can you see and photograph planets?

zombiemann · Aug 26, 2012

Planets, deep space objects such as nebula, star clusters, other galaxies... The sky is the limit

The rig in the picture is most likely capable of imaging the entire Messier catalog of deep space objects.

Aloicious · Aug 26, 2012

zombiemann said:
Planets, deep space objects such as nebula, star clusters, other galaxies... The sky is the limit

The rig in the picture is most likely capable of imaging the entire Messier catalog of deep space objects.

yup, galaxies, nebulae, clusters, planets, etc...really whatever you want...however the deeper into space you're shooting, its exponentially harder capture it can be....so what you need in regards to equipment, depends on what you are wanting to do with it...typically in astrophotography, you want to put your money into the mount because if you plan on doing most anything besides the moon, you will need a stable and precise mount to track in opposition to the earth's movement.

zombiemann · Aug 26, 2012

One of these days I might shell out for an astrophoto rig. I know in theory its possible to do with my 6" newtonian (currently living on a Dobsonian mount) but I've heard balancing out an equatorial with an OT that size can be a headache lol. In the long run I'd be better off getting a good catadioptric like yours. Is that an Astrophysics autoguider on top?

Ernicus · Aug 26, 2012

Here's my first and only attempt thus far. Used a 80-200 2.8

200mm f/8 1/640s

Ernicus · Aug 26, 2012

I'd love an astro rig, I'd never get any sleep. lol

JerseyJules · Aug 26, 2012

Aloicious said:
zombiemann said:

Planets, deep space objects such as nebula, star clusters, other galaxies... The sky is the limit

The rig in the picture is most likely capable of imaging the entire Messier catalog of deep space objects.

Click to expand...

yup, galaxies, nebulae, clusters, planets, etc...really whatever you want...however the deeper into space you're shooting, its exponentially harder capture it can be....so what you need in regards to equipment, depends on what you are wanting to do with it...typically in astrophotography, you want to put your money into the mount because if you plan on doing most anything besides the moon, you will need a stable and precise mount to track in opposition to the earth's movement.

Do you have any examples of pictures you have taken? I would love to see what is possible. I find space very interesting.

rambler · Aug 26, 2012

Save that moon. You might want to include it in an un=interesting night sky of another image.

Aloicious · Aug 26, 2012

zombiemann said:
One of these days I might shell out for an astrophoto rig. I know in theory its possible to do with my 6" newtonian (currently living on a Dobsonian mount) but I've heard balancing out an equatorial with an OT that size can be a headache lol. In the long run I'd be better off getting a good catadioptric like yours. Is that an Astrophysics autoguider on top?

newts actually are pretty good at imaging, I've got a old 8" newtonian on an EQ pier mount, but the setup is like 25 years old, so it's not very advanced, no guiding capabilities and only a RA motor that only has sidereal rate..so it's a good observational scope, but imaging is hard with it. with larger scopes like a newtonian, you just have to have an extra sturdy mount since they're usually larger and heavier...

that setup in the image is an 8" Orion Ritchey-Chretien main scope with an orion ST80 refractor scope piggybacked on it with a starshoot autoguider, the mount is a Atlas EQ-G mount, and I made the battery pack to power the mount and laptop and everything from a large capacity Marine battery.

JerseyJules said:
Do you have any examples of pictures you have taken? I would love to see what is possible. I find space very interesting.

not currently with that setup, I've been having some issues with the tracking on it, I need to get a small extension to allow my autoguider to focus correctly before I can try more deep space objects...

I belong to a local atronomy club and we have a observatory complex real close to my house that I go out to every once in a while. last time I was out there I got some images of saturn but not many of them turned out too well...but I'm also building a small webcam to do plantary imaging with (its actually best to photograph planets with a little webcam by taking video and stacking the best frames together)...this is probably the most 'okay' one I got that night...I know it doesn't look like much, but I was just kindof experimenting, I put my camera body on one of the observatory telescopes, but the weight of the camera body caused the scope to get imbalanced so I had to try and hold it all steady and get the pic, and the scope this was on is probably 15 feet long, with a focal length of ~3500mm, so it was pretty difficult, and planetary imaging itself is very hard to begin with. heh next time I'll have an adapter for my webcam and be able to get something much better images, maybe even capture a few moons of saturn or Jupiter or something...