My first shot of a nebula!!

[Synergy]

At last! I’ve been able to take some pics of the constellation Orion the wide angle shot was a 1 minute exposure using a 28mm lens, later I zoomed in using a 200mm zoom with a 2x matched multiplier, on the sword section which revealed M42, Orion nebula. I’ve been waiting ages to take this pic as when I got interested in Astrophotography, at the beginning of the year, I wasn’t experienced enough to take this kind of shot and didn’t have the equipment either. My only regret of the night was that I didn’t try using my scope as a 1540mm zoom lens on the nebula! But I will next time..



Orion as seen from my garden. the light through the bushes are a neighbours house lights

Zoomed in on Orions's sword. the cloud in the middle is a nebula

This montage shows where the nebula sits in Orion..

 

[terri]

Way cool. You can be proud of these. Keep shooting and trying all those things you mentioned, looks like you're on the right track! Oh, and maybe the neighbors would cut their lights to ease the light pollution next time.....

 

[Synergy]

Thanks terri, the sky is looking fairly clear at the moment (it’s 6pm here) so I may be out tonight taking more shots, this time I will be using 100 ISO film and my scope. Wish me luck!

Btw the light pollution is because of the street lamps and the moon!

 

[Sharkbait]

So those shots are with the equivalent to a 400mm lens??? WOW!!!! How awesome!!!

When you go with exposures that long, do you run into any trouble with blurring as the stars move?

 

[MDowdey]

damn synergy!! i love space, always have even when I was a kid.



md

 

[mrsid99]

Neat shots Synergy!
Well done and extremely interesting, so what's next?

 

[Synergy]

Hi Guys, thanks for your positive remarks, it makes standing out in the freezing cold worth it even more!! :shaking:

Shark…

Indeed 400mm! The zoom lens was wide open at f1.4, I’m not sure if the 2x MM affected the aperture but for a zoom I’ve had some really good shots with this lens, I keep wondering how it compares to those 500mm mirror lenses you see around.

Concerning the stars moving, this is a major problem, and to get around it, the whole camera has to be rotated at exactly the same speed the stars are moving. There are different ways to do this, the best is to have a computer with a CCD camera controlling your motorised scope it does this by locking onto a guide star, as the guide star moves, the whole telescope mount moves to follow it!

The simplest and cheapest way is to use a Equatorial tripod, with a clock drive. You align the tripod to point to the North star and then the clock drive rotates the whole mount “blindly” how precisely you’ve aligned the tripod and how accurate the clock drive is depict how long an exposure you can take and this is the setup i have.

I can take up to around a 2 minute exposure with the 400mm setup. Obviously, the more zoom I use, the more exaggerated the error in alignment will seem in the viewfinder! Without the clock drive, you can see the stars moving in the viewfinder at 400mm! The maximum exposure time without the clock drive for my 28mm wide angle is about 45 seconds, as you increase the mm of lens you have to decrease the exposure time appropriately,

Mrsid99

Last night I went out and using a T adapter hooked my scope directly to my camera and shot Orion again. With this setup the scope acts like a 1540mm lens, I also used the 2x MM as well, which seemed to work ok and gave me the equivalent to a 3080mm lens. I’m not expecting too much from these shots because I’m pushing my abilities as well as the equipments, I expect the shots to look out of focus and with streaky stars!

My next milestone will be my first galaxy I tried earlier in the year but failed! Hopefully in the next couple of months I’ll snap one!

Sorry for the long post!

Synergy

 

[stick35]

Please post what you get from your Telescope pictures. I started looking into getting a telescope setup with a camera mount adapter, but I ended up wondering how much I would really use it after the first week or two. I was very interested in your comments about the motor drive setup. When I was looking at those types of telescopes I thought that it was more of a gimick, but now that I know more about the long exposure times required I see that it would be critical to have that feature.

Thanks for posting your stuff. It's great.

 

[Synergy]

Wow! I’ve got the negs back from the developer and I’m really surprised at how they came out. The film was Fuji Superia 100 (seems insane using a 100 iso film at night!) and my scope was used as a 1540mm lens. This is an improvement over the previous shots which were taken with a 400mm lens and iso 400 film.

I would like to apologise for the scan quality, I may not have time to post tonight so have scanned the neg in at work, the scanner is not great here!

There is so much more detail in this shot which is down to the slow film used, because of that I had to take much longer exposures, this one is 3 minutes, looking at the shot I could probably goto 3.5 or even 4 minutes If I’m lucky.
I wasn’t so lucky using the 2x multiplier streaking appeared after 1-2 minutes and because of the extra zoomage (3080mm) there wasn’t enough light to make a dent on the film, the best frame looks underexposed, but when I get a chance I’ll scan it in and see.

One thing that surprised me the most was focusing, when I look through the viewfinder, I can’t see anything to focus on, I have to centre on a bright star, focus on that and then move back to the nebula, I was very lucky that everything wasn’t out of focus (although it is a bit)

Cheers

Synergy

 

[pilgrim]

wow that dude thats cool! Got any plans of gettin more zoom?
Im with md on this one, space is rad.

 

[Synergy]

Cheer Pilgrim!

I will be using more zoom but first need to improve on my technique before moving on

Here are the better scans of the Orion Nebula

I look forward to your comments

Synergy

 

[surfingfireman]

I am equally amazed by the sky, especially since my dad had me out at night learning constellations when I was about 6 or 7 (I probably knew more then, then I do now). I have attempted some shots of the sky, mostly just streaking stars because it is alot easier I think. Just point at your piece of sky and lock the shutter open for a couple hours. My other attempts at the night sky have failed miserably, even moon shots which many people have given tips about on here. I still can't get one to work out.

I look forward to seeing other shots of yours because mine sure aren't anything to look at!

 

[Synergy]

Surfingfireman,

I know where you’re coming from, do remember that I have far more failures than successes. In the past 10 months I’ve used about 30 films on the night sky and can honestly say I’ve only got maybe 5 good shots and even these aren’t shots worthy of the general public. Having Astronomy as a hobby helps a lot but I read somewhere that you need “obsessive perseverance” to be any good!

If you find your self under a clear night sky with your camera and want to try photographing the stars you could try taking a pic of the seven sisters (Pleiades)…

Firstly you will need the following..

A camera that has a bulb setting for manual shutter control or shutter settings up to 25 seconds
A cable release or remote for your camera (you could use a timer if the camera has long enough shutter speed settings)
ISO 400 film ( I recommend Fuji Superia)
A lens in the range of 50-100mm
Tripod or method to securely hold your camera
A watch with a seconds hand
A nice clear dark sky

Firstly, find something interesting to shoot I recommend The Seven Sisters which looks like this..

It looks like a small bunch of flowers and is a very bright cluster of stars so should be easy to find. If you can’t find it point your camera at anything else that looks interesting, preferably something looking straight up (the sky is darker straight up).

Set your lens to 1 stop down from wide open and shutter speed to bulb. Set focus to infinity

Using your cable release or remote take shots with the following shutter speeds in seconds..
2,5,7,10,12,15,20,25.

In between each of these shots I would recommend taking a picture of something with a flash like a piece of white paper held in front of the camera. This is simply so that on the negative you can define where the frames are!

That’s it!

Developing the film..

If you have a negative scanner of any sorts then simply get the negative developed with out prints and scan and print them your self.
If you don’t it’s probably better to still have just the negative developed and pick out the frames that look the sharpest/brightest and have prints made from them.
When doing this explain to the technician that the dots are stars and surrounding area should be black he or she will probably have to darken the print to make it look normal otherwise the prints will come out with grey backgrounds and white splodges for stars!

Let me know if any of you have a go!.

Synergy

 

[surfingfireman]

Syn,

Thanks for the tips. On those cold winter nights we get up here, the sky can be REALLY clear. I will definitely make some more attempts at it. Does B&W film work any better then colour? And I still remember Pleiades...

C-YA

Mike

 

[Synergy]

I’m not sure about B+W film, I’ve never used it, I do know that it’s used with filters where for example you would take 3 shots of a galaxy, each one 45 minutes long with a different prime colour and then overlay each picture to produce a colour print. I guess this gives you more control over colour balance and exposure. I’ve seen the results of people using B+W and it can look great, but somehow it never has the same impact a colour shot has to me!

BTW I envy your location , do you have much light pollution?

Synergy