astrophotography

[rdking647]

finally a decent astro photo. its a total of 48 minutes of exposure using a remote controlled telescope in new mexico

m20,the trifid nebula


m20 edited slowly with ps by rdking647, on Flickr

 

[spacefuzz]

beautiful! I need to start doing some of that. What size telescope and camera did you use?

 

[Davor]

Wow that's amazing! would love to know what kind of telescope you are using.

 

[480sparky51 50]

My guess is he's renting time on one through the internet.

 

[Josh66]

My guess is he's renting time on one through the internet.

Considering that he lives in Austin and the telescope is in NM - you're probably right. Not that far of a drive though...

 

[rdking647]

the telescope is in new mexico, I rent time on it..What i do is set up an imaging program. I tell the telescope what to point to,how long an an exposure to make,what filters to use and what time to run. after the images are taken i download then and process then using 2 different programs. because the camera is a b/w camera I use 4 different images for color. a luminosity image and one each for red,green and blue. The first program takes the images and aligns them and then stacks them. then color is restored. Then i switch to photoshop elements for final processing.


this was done on a 14.5" scope.
LightBuckets - Online Telescopes
for this photo i took 4 images in each channel. each was a 4 minute image for a total of 12 minutes per channel. Its better to use multiple shorter images rather than 1 long image when using the telescope cameras. That reduces noise. the final image has a total of 48minutes of exposure..

the rates for the telescope depend on which scope you use. they have 3 of then that cost anywhere between 30 and 70 "points" and hour. each point is basically a dollar. they give discounts depending on the moon phase and whether you pre schedule your run or do it as time is available. they also have an option for an "easy image" that is more like using auto mode on a DSLR except you still have to do the post processing yourself

 

[480sparky51 50]

Do you get a refund for cloudy skies or do you "pay your money and take your chances"?

 

[rdking647]

it its cloudy then your program doesnt run and you get a refund..they have special equipment than can detect clouds and that takes the telescope off line