Picture perfect stary sky (APOD 15 August 2007)

[leep]

I see all these absolutely fabulous pictures taken of stary night skies, like todays (15-Aug-2007) APOD. I have a simple Sony DSC-H2 digital camera with a simple tripod. I have areas near me that I can go to at night that have dark enough sky that I can see (although fairly feintly) the Milky Way stretching across the sky. I've tried taking 10, 15, and even up to 60 second exposures with the camera aimed up at the sky, and all I get are a few white dots for the brightest stars (and of course star-streaking due to the non-traking tripod). Nothing anywhere NEAR what I see in pictures like todays APOD. What equipment would I need to get pictures of that quality? I also have a ETX-75 telescope that has a tracking mount, but from what I understand it's the wrong kind as it will rotate the image as it tracks. Not to mention the fact that it requires me to align it to a couple of named stars and I don't know the stars well enough (ok, at all) to be able to do that yet.

I am very interested in getting into astro-photography, but am too new to the field in general to know what I should be looking for. I want to be able to take very long exposure (hours?) images of not just stars, but deep space objects too if possible. I am very computer-literate (I'm a software developer, self employed), and I know part of getting that quality of image involves processing the images after. I have Adobe Photoshop, but am unfamiliar with what this "processing" entails. I've heard talk of combining multiple shorter-exposure images, taking red, green, and blue filtered exposures and combining them, etc.

Any information any of you could provide to help get me started in the field of astro-photography would be well appreciated. Thanks!

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Lee

[Mary Nell]

Yeah! How do they do that? I'm light years behind you, and I wonder how it is possible to see all that starry cloudy dusty light.

I love APOD!

[starnut]

I'm light years behind you

Really? Where are in the sky are you located now?

Mary, a light year is an unit of distance, not time. It drives me crazy when people use it for time. A light year is the distance light travels in one year, approximately 6 trillion (million million) miles.

[DonB312]

Starnut,

I do not see a reference to time in Mary's post. Her reference to light-years seems to me to be the same as saying "I am miles behind you" or "You are miles ahead of me". I don't really see a problem with that. In any case, both of our responses are pretty far off-topic to the question posed by the OP.

Don Bush

[leep]

So, to get back on topic... I realy am very interested in getting into astronomy and specificaly into astro-photography. It's been an interest of mine most of my life (most of the 40 years of it), but I've just recently decided to persue it as a personal hobby. Any tips on hardware/software or any other related topics would be greatly appreciated. I've been watching APOD for most of this year and I'm just in complete awe at some of the pictures that appear to have been taken from here on earth by amature astronomers (not using billion dollar telescopes).

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Lee

[Mary Nell]

LOL! I plead ignorance. I think that was sort of the point of my question. (And thanks, Don!)

How are those starry clouds made visible via photography? Sort of a question--and I'd love an answer if there's one that is simple enough to explain here--and sort of expressing my awe.

Good luck, Lee!

[starnut]

I do not see a reference to time in Mary's post. Her reference to light-years seems to me to be the same as saying "I am miles behind you" or "You are miles ahead of me". I don't really see a problem with that. In any case, both of our responses are pretty far off-topic to the question posed by the OP.

Maybe so, but the term "light year" is often used colloquially and incorrectly to indicate a passage of time. It is our job in this forum to correct less knowledgible people and show them the correct usages.

[starnut]

So, to get back on topic... I realy am very interested in getting into astronomy and specificaly into astro-photography. It's been an interest of mine most of my life (most of the 40 years of it), but I've just recently decided to persue it as a personal hobby. Any tips on hardware/software or any other related topics would be greatly appreciated. I've been watching APOD for most of this year and I'm just in complete awe at some of the pictures that appear to have been taken from here on earth by amature astronomers (not using billion dollar telescopes).

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Lee

I don't know much about astrophotography either, but I am sure that if you google "astrophotography", you will get zillions of of links to other web sites, including some magazines such as "Sky and Telescope". It interests me too, but it requires lots of bucks and time and a dark site away from light pollution, which I don't have, unfortunately.

Good luck with your hobby.

[starnut]

LOL! I plead ignorance. I think that was sort of the point of my question. (And thanks, Don!)

How are those starry clouds made visible via photography? Sort of a question--and I'd love an answer if there's one that is simple enough to explain here--and sort of expressing my awe.

Good luck, Lee!

It would require a good camera mounted on a tracking telescope mount, one that moves with the Earth's rotation, and a long time exposure. Attach the camera to a telescope, you can get close-up shoots of the lovely nebulae and clusters. What I'd like to know is how some of the photos taken by amateurs are so sharp, without the blurring caused by the atmospheric turbulence.

[iamlucky13]

I found a great primer on astrophotography last week. I swore it was from Sky and Telescope Magazine, but I can't seem to locate it now. It did find this list of articles though:

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/howto/astrophotography

Here's another list of topics:

http://www.astropix.com/HTML/I_ASTROP/INTRO.HTM

I haven't had an opporunity to try much myself yet, but I'm hoping to before it starts to get cold.

[markk]

Hi, all. Noob to the forum here. Hopefully my first contribution can be of some help. As has been said, you'll need a tracking mount. I recently bought this one
http://www.telescope.com/shopping/produ ... ductID=296
from Orion but have not had a chance to take it to a dark-sky spot to try it out. It supports my Canon D60 with 28-105 lens just fine so smaller cameras should work easily.

The nice thing about shooting digital is that you can take a bunch of short (30 sec or so) exposures and combine them (Google "image stacking"), rather than doing a single long exposure, which can introduce tracking errors. Because of this, a lot of less expensive, point-and-shoot cameras can probably get good results.

HTH
Mark

[GalacticImages]

Hi All,

I'm the man who took this photo on APOD today 8/16/07.

Here are the details on the exposure and equipment used.

It was shot from Yellow Springs, Ohio captured the morning of August 12th around 4:00am, E.S.T.

Camera mounted on a Orion EQ-1 portable mount, with motor drive/hand paddle.
Canon 10D DSLR(unmodified),
ISO 400, 20 mm lens @ F4,
Pointed towards the constellation of Taurus,
for a single 4 minutes exposure.

I Cropped the original image to show the main Objects...
M45 Pleiades Cluster (top)
Mars (center)
Hyades Cluster (bottom)
Persied Meteor (lower right)

If the mount is properly polar aligned, or the polar axis pointed at or near the north star, you will get accurate tracking for about 10- 15 minutes with this mount, using typical camera lenses. The mount runs off of 4 D cell batteries and last for weeks of use.

The EQ-1 mount is very portable and small, it literally fits in a small briefcase, it cost about $55.00 for the mount and $55.00 for the motor/controller.

For $110.00 from Oriontelescopes.com, its a steal for how accurate and portable it is.

There are many links on the web for getting started in basic astrophotography using simple camera lenses.

Robert Reeves has an excellent book($35) on "An Intro to Digital Astrophotography" http://www.robertreeves.com/
I recommend you get started there,

Good luck and keep trying!!!

[markk]

Much appreciation for the info on your image, John (Wonderful shot, BTW). It'll come in handy when I head out to start experimenting. Good to know that the EQ-1 is a decent piece of gear, too. I'm looking forward to using it. Thanks again.

[wildmaven]

Lee, I am also starting out. One of the most important things to remember, if you're going to take really long exposures, is battery life. If you can get a power adapter for your camera and can plug that in somewhere, you'll be ahead of the game. The photo of the Milky Way below was taken in Washington state, from my backyard, for only a couple of minutes exposure, focus on infinity, F3.5, bulb setting:



While it's not great, it's a start! The shakiness occured because I had set the camera on the covered hot tub and the dang filtering system came on in the middle of the shot, ha ha!

The best thing to do is to get out there and just play. Try different settings and see what happens.

Marian

[leep]

Thank you all so much for your comments and tips! My current camera, a Sony DSC-H2, only lets me choose up to 30 seconds for shutter speed, and F2.8 to 8.0, and up to 12x optical zoom. I know I've read before what the F setting is, but off hand I can't remember. Can I assume that if I want to start taking decent night-time sky shots, I'll need a different camera? One that allows for more than 30 second shutter speed?

For a couple of mintues exposure, would I need a tracking mount just to take a night-sky shot showing the Milky Way? Would I get too much streaking in a couple of minutes? Also, what about deeper space images, such as the Orion Nebula? Would I need a telescope and/or a tracking mount and a camera capable of attaching to it for that? Or would a 12x optical zoom be sufficient without a telescope?

And one more question for this round ( )... is a regular digital camera good enough, or should I be looking at digital SLRs? What are CCD cameras I've heard about? Are they what I should be looking into?

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Way too full of questions...
Lee

[leep]

Sorry, one more. On a clear moonless night, I can see the Milky Way, but it's very feignt. Is that "dark sky" enough for descent night-time sky or even deeper space object shots?

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Lee

[BMAONE23]

It should be sufficient but just keep in mind: Any light source, no matter how apparently insignificant to the casual observer, will become more apparent and more obtrusive during longer time exposures.

[markk]

Lee (and anyone else interested ), I think you should be able to get started using the equipment that you already have. Again, thanks to software, single long-exposures are no longer absolutely necessary to capture dim stars and sky features. The software I'm trying out is located here: http://www.cs.unm.edu/~kwiley/software/ ... acker.html
This is Macintosh software, but there are Windows and *NIX packages that have the same functionality. One interesting thing about it is that it will (semi)automatically align a series of exposures, which can negate the need for a tracking mount. You will just have to manually adjust your tripod between exposures to frame the same approximate area of sky as it moves over time - Pick a couple of bright "guide" stars and place them at the same position in the viewfinder before each exposure. Take a series of 30 sec. shots like this and use the software to align and combine them. This should give the equivalent of taking a long exposure on a tracking equatorial mount.

This technique would be best for wide-angle, skyscape type shots. The farther you zoom in, the more motion will be apparent in the individual frames and the need for tracking during exposures will increase. Experimentation should show you where the limits are and whether or not you will want to upgrade equipment.

As far as setting the aperture (ƒ/stop) on your camera, you'll want to start out at the lowest number, which is the largest opening. This will allow the most light into the camera.

Finally, and you may already know this, one drawback with the H2 is the lack of a remote shutter release to avoid vibration. You can use the self-timer as a workaround.

Happy shooting!
Mark