Had really great skies but the moon was rather bright in the sky. Well the club is amazing, it has a rooftop balcony which 4 scopes. A Meade LX200 10 inch ACF fully goto, A 6 inch relector which is hand made. A 14 inch on a permanant mount and an 18 inch with a 5 inch spotting scope attached, which can take pictures. Saw a lot of great deep sky stuff NGC 2903, M57, M82, The ring nebula, Saturn, Venus and a host of other great stuff, and its all for free, going back next friday to see hopefully even more amazing stuff.
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Last edited by MisterBubbles; 16-08-2013, 23:06. -
If you ever have a go on their astrophotography equipment make sure to post any pics
I'll never get bored of this. I think I've posted it before (but can't be arsed to check) and I think it has been updated since I last saw it:
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18 inch, eh? Lucky bastard. I'm regularly awestruck looking at stuff through my humble 6 inch and can only imagine how Saturn, indeed anything, looks through an 18 inch scope.Comment
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Well i continued my adventures at the club last night.We wasnt there last friday as we was on holiday. So there was still a lot of families and people who had never looked through a telescope before, which i great to see, and maybe a few of the kids will be back just like me when i grew up and start wanting my own telescope.
After everybody left about 10pm, me and the members had the telscopes to ourselves and could take time to look at objects and observe them for longer periods. Seen M11 the wild duck cluster, M13 in the LX200, M92 again in the LX200, M82 the cigar nebula, M29 in cygnus, so many objects i spent the next hour and odds just looking at each object for at least 10 minutes trying to see the structure and resolve more stars.
Might be able to go to Algoy in the Alps next next, as theres is an annual star party with really dark skies and everybody brings there different scopes.
Only problem is my German isn't good enough to talk to everybody, and only a handful of members speak pretty good English, but that hasn't stopped people making me feel welcome and just enjoying the skies from Germany.
So can't wait for next friday to see new and more objects.Comment
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Rotating Moon filmed from space by NASA:
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A different moon this time: image sequence from the New Horizon probe of the volcano Tvashtar erupting and spewing material over 300km above the surface of Jupiter's moon, Io.
I'll get back to taking my own photos soon, hopefully! The sporadic clear nights we've had this year always seem to be on nights when I can't go out with the scope.Comment
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The first ever video showing the Earth and Moon orbiting each other:
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BBC News - Best Space Images of 2013
Re the second photo in the gallery: I saw Chris Hadfield playing Space Oddity at the Robin Ince & Brian Cox Xmas show at the Hammersmith Apollo. It was very good!Comment
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A moon shot from just a little while ago. Not as good as some moon shots already posted but I was pretty pleased with it. I don't have a fantastic telescope but that's not really the issue - the issue is the very lightweight tripod which wobbles at every touch and the slightest breeze. Pretty calm tonight, hence this pic...
Jupiter looks awesome tonight even in my little scope, with the stripes and its four main moons clearly visible. But I haven't worked out if there is any possible way I can photograph it the way it looks when I just observe. With the movement and light needed for the camera, possibly not.Last edited by Dogg Thang; 10-03-2014, 20:45.Comment
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Very nice shot. The Moon always looks best when it isn't full, it gives the picture a much better contrast.
With Jupiter, it's so bright that you actually need a really short shutter speed if you want to see any detail in a photo. I can't remember the settings I used but I did a quick google search and even at ISO400 and 1/10 shutter speed Jupiter overexposes. The short shutter speed means you don't have to worry much about tracking either.
I think the drawback is that speeding up the shutter speed to expose Jupiter correctly means it probably won't capture enough light for the moons to show up. And if you're using a DSLR with a big image sensor, Jupiter will look really small.
Just going by memory though, I've been mainly visual observing for a while now (got fed up with the clouds rolling in by the time I'd aligned everything precisely enough for photography!) and haven't taken a pic of Jupiter for ages. If I have a clear night tonight I might have a go and let you know what settings I had to use on the camera.Comment
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Yeah that would be great, thanks. My setup is very basic - Celestron scope with a Nikon D3200 camera. Actually my scope has the computerised guidance thing and I haven't once used it. Does anyone know, if set up properly, does it track with the movement of the sky for longer exposre photography? With the lightweight tripod, I'm thinking it wouldn't really work anyway as the motor coupled with breeze would be too wobbly but I'm just curious.Comment
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It depends if it's an alt-azimuth mount or an equatorial mount. You really need an equatorial mount for long exposure photos but I think you can get away with 20-40 seconds on an alt az, depending on the focal length. But yeah, a cheap tripod won't help matters!
Best thing to do is set it all up, get the scope to track an object, and see what results you get. Even cheap equipment can sometimes come up with surprisingly good results.Comment
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I attempted to get Jupiter tonight. This was the best of the bunch. It requires a little imagination...
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Dogg Thang what equipment and telescope are you using? Any pictures of the mount? Maybe purchase or even build a new mount?Comment
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