Wide field astrophotography

As I found my enthusiasm on the rise with recent my success in capturing fair amount of detail of the Orion nebula using nothing but a tripod and a still camera, I got myself a fast 55mm lens that would capture even more detail.. or so, I had hoped. 

I could not wait for the moon to get into its waning phase again for me to try out the new lens. Played around a little with the focusing which is so hard to do with these miniature viewfinders set in neck-breaking angles to get the object in view.

After spending quite a bit of shots that were blurry out-of-focus, such as this one:

I decided to try to preview the picture taken in the camera itself, duh!

Turns out, this was good enough for me to get the right level of focus to try to get pin-pointed stars..

and so, I set the aperture to 1.8 and fired off, took some darks and a bias frame or two.

DeepSkyStacker to stack them and here is the final version:

As you can see, lot more detail but it still feels a bit over-exposed.

So, I have to wait another night to see if I can do better by stopping "up" a little or decreasing the exposure times to about a sec.

Will try both and update.. stay tuned.

Meanwhile, quite pleased with the lens, though there is quite a bit of vignetting seen near the edges, as expected.

Deep Sky Astrophotography

And so my journey into astrophotography continues with me wandering into different sites like this one. Amazed at the level of detail that can be captured merely using a tripod and inexpensive digital SLR camera, I tried my hand at various objects of the deep sky. One of the 1st things was to look toward the center of our galaxy in the direction of Sagittarius. Despite the light pollution, I could capture remarkable detail. Here below is the side-by-side picture comparison with Jerry Lodriguss' image of the same region.

Excited by the relative success of the simplicity of the approach, I decided to wait till the winter sky when Orion constellation would be high above the light polluted skies of Chennai.



Finally, after all the flooding damage and disruptions, got some clear skies.. last night (Dec. 17, 2015) I managed to take some pictures of the Great Orion Nebula. Here below is the cropped result of the region M42.

 Needless to say, I am impressed with the results.. It is a stack of 79 pictures of 2 sec. exposures @f5.6, ISO1600 zoomed in at about 120mm using a telephoto lens on Canon 350D (Rebel XT) and stacked using DeepSkyStacker.







And here is a full-frame with the belt of Orion clearly visible:

Belt-of-Orion, 135mm-79x2s-f5.6-ISO1600 (EOS 350D)

Prior to attempting to capture Orion, I attempted to capture Andromeda Galaxy - wasn't as great but on Oct 16, 2015, got a reasonably encouraging start..here is that image.

M31-Andromeda-200mm-12x4s-f5.6-ISO1600 (EOS 350D)

An Amateur Astronomer's notes

Just like many others on the net, I think my web page(s) should be a reflection of my interests. Life around us abounds in a multitude of ways and that which is beyond our own earth could be even more diverse though intangible and sometimes, impossible to see. The following quote surmises it well:"The study of the universe provides a sense of perspective that makes the tribulations of day-to-day life seem trivial." - T. Wesley Erickson.

It is that profound feeling of awe which attracted me to Astronomy. Just as music and faith helps us understand and get in touch with the divine, astronomy provides a vista to seek and (try to) comprehend (or understand that it is not possible to comprehend) the infinite!

Astronomy - one of my interests

Astronomy always interested me and it interested me seriously enough to consider pursuing as a hobby since the first reports of the Halley's comet in 1986. The discovery of the supernova 1987A from Chile by Canadian astronomer, Ian Shelton in the same year only added to my enthusiasm.

Since then, I have always wanted to look up and be able to identify some, if not all the 88, of the constellations. It started as an eagerness to be able to point to asterisms or stars and tell them by name. Meanwhile, like most aspiring middle-income high school kid, growing up in India, my interests waxed and waned with the obligations to concentrate on getting suitable grades to enter a professional institution at the expensive to interesting pursuits such as amateur astronomy. Those days before the internet and ease of access to information, without a local club to join and learn from others, it was hard to keep the interest alive. Nonetheless, on my arrival to the United States, I made sure I didn't miss the comets Hale-Bopp and the Hyakutake in 1995 and 1996. I recall going up to the dept. of astronomy in our school where they had set up a telescope on the roof top to see the "little green smudgy fuzz-ball" core of the comet Hyakutake. That day I decided I'd try to get as much information on my own to get started in serious amateur astronomy.

On taking up my first job, I decided it's about time I redeemed my promise to myself, so I went ahead an bought a book on observing the moon. Then I got myself an inexpensive binoculars (Bushnell 10X50; about $35) from Wal-Mart, I was hooked...

I observed the moon whenever I could and liked the amount of detail one could gleam with a simple hand held binocular. I made sure I followed the space shuttle-Mir docking in 1997 and try to follow it with the naked eye as it flew over north America.

And then I joined the Naperville Astronomical Association and bought my first telescope. It was the ETX60 - AT at a going-out-of-business sale. Then aperture fever set in, so I got myself a used Celestron celestar C8 schmidt cassegrain telescope. And then there was no looking back. I enjoyed the Leonids of 2001 over Kyoto, Japan with one of my best buddies since high school. I also witnessed the Aurora Borealis on Nov 5, 2001 over Chicago.

These images of the Northern Lights were taken under suburban conditions near the south western suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. The memorable day was November 5, 2001.

There was large X-class flare heading our way from the sun. And the predictions were for a very nice show that night. With clear conditions, I couldn't have asked for more. Images taken using 35 mm SLR (Yashica F-3) with a 50 mm f/1:4.5 lens mounted on a tripod. .

These pictures were taken for approximately 30-45 seconds on an ISO 800 Max Kodak film. However, due to the sensitive nature of the film, the exposure could be halved for improved pictures.






The following is am image of a 6 day old moon taken

using a digital camera (Sony Mavica) handheld to the eye piece of a Meade ETX 60 AT telescope at about 28X magnification. To get an idea of some of the details that are seen here, take a look at this image. What makes the moon appear pitted with craters is that the moon, unlike the earth, doesn't have an atmosphere but does have gravity (about 1/4th that on the earth) which causes meteors to reach its surface without burning up. This causes these craters, though they might have happened over thousands (or more) years, mostly 
during the early period of our solar system formation. 


Over the course of my journey, I have had the enjoyable experience of viewing the night sky from the following locations:

• Adelaide, Australia (34deg 55' S, 138 deg 35' E)
• Alleppey, India (9 deg 18' N, 76 deg 14' E)
• Caton Farm, IL
• Green River State Park (41 deg 38' N, 89 deg 29' W)
• Kyoto (35 deg N, 135 deg 46' E)
• Madras (Chennai) (13 deg 3' N, 80 deg 40' E)
• Naperville (41 deg 42' N, 88 deg 10' W)
• Sunnyvale (37 deg 14' N, 121 deg 52' W)
• Westmont, IL (41 deg 48' N, 88 deg W)

Planetary Photography
Planetary imaging is easier than deep sky objects, especially with the inception of digital camcorders and cameras. Special adapters are now available to attach digital cameras to telescope eye pieces to take images such as these of Saturn and Jupiter posted here.

Digital image processing plays an important role in bringing out details from the raw images. The images posted here have been taken using a 10" Newtonian reflector (1000mm, 133X mag.) under bad seeing conditions (faintest stars are of 5th or 6th magnitude to the naked eye). They are processed using PaintShop Pro image processing software.

All pictures taken with 10" reflector @ 133X, Sony Mavica digital camera handheld to the eye-piece (afocal projection).The image of Saturn (above) shows her rings and a faint detail on her surface. 20 images layered, unsharp mask applied. The image of Jupiter (above right) shows its cloud bands and two of its jovian satellites. 40 images layered, unsharp mask and median filter applied. The close up of Jupiter (above) shows the cloud bands in greater detail. 



The picture is a combination of 9 images taken on Feb. 19, 2003

from Westmont, IL. The scope used was a 10" F/4.9 Dobsonian using a 13.8mm SWA Meade eyepiece. The camera (Olympus Camedia C2040Z) was held afocally to the eyepiece set to f/2.8 and the images were bracketted (exposures from 1/15th sec. to 1/30th sec.). The GRS, I believe, is just coming into view on the upper limb.

Planet Mars got to be the closest to our Earth on Aug. 27th, 2003 in recorded history (i.e. in over 3,000 years). So in the run-up to the event, we went out to the Naperville Astronomical Association's observatory to look for features on Mars early in the morning on Aug, 9th, 2003. The below two single exposure images (1/20th and 1/30th of a second) using a digital camera (olympus C2040 Zoom) handheld to the eyepiece. 

The map on the left can be used as reference to see the details.

In the fall of 2001, I had the chance to visit Japan and the timing coincided with the Leonids meteor shower in Nov. I have captured a few of the meteors in these images below using extended exposures.

In the newspapers the next day was a very nice picture of the meteor shower..

Another object of the winter sky is the M42 ('M' for Messier Object) - the Orion nebula which

is visible to the naked eye. If you look closely at the "belt of Orion" and follow down to the sword you'll see this nursery of stars that is a fuzzy cloud. Seen here is the nebula where new stars are being formed. Orion's sword is the vertical row of 3 "stars" - in the middle of the vertical row of "dots" or "stars" is not really a star but the nebula. It is also beautiful to look at through a binocular. These exposures have been taken using 50mm f4 lens focused at infinity and mounted on a home-made barn-door/scotch mount, exposed for about 4-6 minutes. This is seen from mid southern latitudes to mid northern latitudes, in the constellation Orion. The object is given the name "Great Orion Nebula" and is listed by noted astronomer of the 18th century, Charles Messier in his catalog as the 42 item. Also, in close proximity to the nebula is a further extension of the same, but due to its detachment from the bigger and brighter nebula, it is listed by him as the 43rd item. Note that it has a slight pinkish hue to it and appears as a small blur as opposed to a sharp star-like point light source.

One of the favorites of amateur astro-photographers is the 
star-trail that can be easily captured using an extended 
exposure on a fixed tripod. This particular picture captures the rotation of the stars (or actually, the rotation of the earth) around the north celestial pole. The small star in the middle (actually the smallest circle) is that of the pole star (part of the little dipper asterism). The two diagonal streaks are airplanes passing through the field of view. 50mm lens ~42minute exposure on a ISO 400 film.

The montage on the left is that of the total lunar eclipse of Nov. 8, 2003. These pictures show the moon coming out of totality and in doing so, changes color from being red due to the light coming through the atmosphere of the earth while it is in the shadow to white. Taken with an Olympus C2040 zoom digital camera using the afocal projection with a Meade ETX 90 telescope (f=1250mm). In order to get the entire moon, a small magnification (focal length of 40 mm) eye-piece had to be used.