I got some nice single exposure shots of Deep Sky objects today after a decent polar alignment. The culmination of everything I’ve learnt so far. I was totally blown away by the colours in the Orion Nebula which looks like a grey wisp in the eyepiece. 30 seconds of the DSLR sensor sucking in photons made a big difference. All taken using ISO 200 (apart from the double cluster) and 30 second exposures.
Pleiades
Orion Nebula
Double Cluster ISO 400
the beehive cluster
the christmas tree cluster
I’ve not used my telescope since last winter having since moved house and been busy with several other things but last night / this morning I dusted off my astronomy equipment and did dome observing. Stargazing Live on BBC television did it’s fair share of inspiring me and I must admit the show is probably the primary reason for encouraging me to face the sub 0 temperatures. This wither is not as cold as last year’s and armed with a thermal layer I wasn’t too affected by the weather.
A little tip for fellow astronomers – fingerless gloves worked really well.
For the first time since owning the telescope I carried out a full polar alignment including offsetting Polaris in the correct way to achieve the offset alignment for this time of year. I cannot believe how much difference this made and following a three star alignment every object I searched for popped straight into the eyepiece with no adjustments.
I was giddy like a little school girl when I glimpsed the Great Nebula in Orion for the first time with my own eyes. Even though the Moon was very bright and spoilt deep space objects considerably it was nevertheless fascinating and the structure of the cloud around the bright centre was easy to make out. I can’t wait for a dark night to see it again in more detail.
The entire Orion Nebula in visible light.
Credit: NASA/ESA
After the Orion Nebula excitement I took advice from Cox and O’Briain and I pointed the scope at Jupiter which is at it’s most impressive at this time of the year due to it’s proximity to earth (being at the closest point to earth in it’s orbit). It was really impressive and by far the best view I’ve had of it; the weather pattern stripes were really clear. I’ll try and get a photo this month. For now – nighty night!
My Skywatcher 200 on a HEQ5 mount with sexy red led strip making it looks like the nightrider (sort of… well not really at all).
This was fantastic, polar aligned very roughly, not even using the polar scope.
Due to a lack of a spirit bubble on the mount I used a normal spirit level.
Using 2-star allignment we picked 2 stars on opposite sides of the night sky and once this was done we were ready to go and the mount worked amazingly well.
Considering how poor the polar allignment was it is hard not to be impressed by a piece of engineering that pops planets, galaxies and nebulae into the eyepiece of a huge telescope at a few touches of a few buttons. We found Jupiter in a few seconds followed by a supremely faint (thanks to the really bright full moon) Andromeda Galaxy and Ring Nebula. We saw all of these within a matter of 30 minutes, something which woould have taken hours using manual twiddling on knobs ;-). What’s more the mount tracked the object while we went in to warm up in the house and thanks to the mains power there was no issue with batteries going flat.
Totally blown away. I will upload photos of equipment and first astro images in the near future. Took a few snaps of Jupiter with my DSLR which I shall send over to a graphic designer firend who will hopefully help in toning down the brightness to reveal some detail.
astromartian signing out
Most amazing spot so far! I was scanning around for an hour before finding it (using star hop method). Hard to put into words the excitement of finding something which is 2.5 million light years (2.4×1019 km) away from us in the eyepiece of a telescope I own. I managged to get a fairly nice picture with my camera (DSLR) while manually turning the R.A. knob in an attempt to counte-act the rotation of our planet. Here is my best picture:
…yes I did. Cloudy night last night but staying up until 2 am meant I got my first look at Jupiter. A massive bright and large star with the naked eye it was transformed in the eyepiece of the telescope into an amazing sight. Three moons and the bands of gassious clouds could be clearly seen. I managed to get a shot with my phone but it certainly doesn’t do the moment any justice.
…astromartian signing out.
My first Messier success. It took me and a fellow astronomer buddy about two hours to find this but it was well worth it. His wife however, seemed less than impressed. My girlfriend wasn’t even impressed by Saturn. I don’t get it.
I didn’t take any photos but here is the best estimation of how it looked through the eyepiece (the photo courtesy of D. Nash):
Well after noticing a big dent in the OTA I returned it to the UK distributor via First Light Optics and received a dent-free replacement. On the day I took delivery the sky was fantastic, a clear warm night filled with the smell of spring flowers and sound of birds (poetic, I know). I decided to test my Nikon T-ring converter which I bagged from eBay for £5. Set up the scope, popped the camera in to the focuser and took some test shots using an IR remote to stop vibrations transferring from pushing the shutter release manually. I’ve attached some examples below:
My best moon pic picked from my first set of images. I’m pretty impressed with it. It’s a little out of focus but it is so hard to get a good focus with the tiny and dim Nikon D40 focuser. Brilliant result for my first attempts though:
The Moon – short exposure, no tracking
This was my attempt at imaging Mars. Lots of noise and no tracking made this difficult to say the least:
Mars – short exposure, no tracking
I did try to track by hand but this wasn’t very helpful, it’s clear from the trail that the mount was not polar aligned perfectly:
Mars – long exposure, manual tracking
Day 3 with my new Skywatcher 200P.
Not the greatest day of observing, I attempted to take pictures with my D40 SLR mounted on the piggyback bracket but light pollution meant all I got was orange sky with a few of the brighter stars showing as blurred dots.
Before this I planned to be ready to see Jupiter as the sky moved into darkness. The Moon and Venus, just below it, were visible way before dusk but by the time Jupiter became apparent it was behind the trees which are the bane of my observing.
Running low on patience I had problems balancing the scope when I added the camera and spent most of the time trying to find something more complex in the night sky apart from Mars, Venus and the Moon. The setting circles seem to not be set up correctly since the reading on the Declination axis was totally different to Stellarium when I tested it on Venus. I assumed it would work since the tripod was pointed North fairly accurately and I’d adjusted the Altitude to account for the local latitude. No such luck. There were two setting circles on the Right Ascension axis, one which moved and the other which didn’t (closer to the mount). It is difficult to work out what means what. I’ll try to post a picture to explain further.
Anyway… several disappointments later I used Stellarium to find out that the (I think it is ‘the’ since I have found nothing like it) Double Cluster should be visible just left of Cassiopeia. Undoing the mount clutches I moved the scope by hand while using the tube rings as a sight to point the scope broadly where I expected to find the Double Cluster. Amazingly I think it worked, I saw an area of sky (through the 25mm eyepiece) which differed greatly from the surrounding area. I used the eyepiece simulator in Stellarium to check what the clusters should look like and am pretty sure I did find them. Fantastic sight to find so many stars together even with lots of light pollution and the neighbour’s garden light popping on every so often. I need to learn how to use the setting circles so I can record the exact position of objects I find enabling me to find them again the following night.
Turned out to be a pretty good evening/night after all. Hunting for objects in the night sky is proving to be exhilarating and very addictive. Such a rush to actually find what I am looking for. I am worried that I’m spending most of my free time attached to my telescope, I didn’t expect it to be so addictive.
astromartian 