SEOAS Astrophotos
Click on the thumbnail images to see the larger images.
The following three photos were taken by Phil Armstrong in early 2005. In his words:
The moon shots were taken through a 4.5 inch Celestron Newtonian reflector with a 25 mm Plossel eyepiece. I just placed a digital camera up to the eyepiece very carefully and moved it around until I saw the picture on the little screen at the back of the camera then hit the shutter release. I took about 20 shots using various filters, the orange filter makes it look like a lunar eclipse. Hope you like them, regards, Phil Armstrong.
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"Normal" moon |
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Blue moon |
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Orange filter produces image looking like lunar eclipse |
The following shots of Mars, sunspots and the Venus transit were taken by Bill Schneider. In his words:
Mars
Here is one from the Mars opposition a couple summers ago. I used my 8" dobsonian reflector and a "point and shoot" digital camera on a manual exposure setting. Exposure was determined by trial and error as judged on the LCD screen. The camera was handheld as steady as I could muster over a 9mm TeleVue Nagler eyepiece and a series of photos were taken - perhaps 30 total because of the perils of handholding. Back at the computer I selected 6 of the best frames and cropped them in Photoshop to place the globe of mars in the center (roughly) of the frame. (As you might imagine, the original pictures had Mars all over the frame because of the imprecision of handholding). I "fed" the cropped pictures to a picture "stacking" program called Registax. Stacking programs auto-align and overlay individual frames of objects to create composite pictures having remarkable detail. This picture is the result of the stacking of 6 individual pictures and shows more than any single picture does. The improvement borders on magic! Registax is freeware available by clicking here.
Sunspots
Here's another "how to make an astrophoto without really trying". This is a photo of large sunspots taken November 2, 2003 through a TeleVue Ranger 70mm refractor using a Baader solar filter. A point-and-shoot digital camera was merely aimed at the Vixen 22mm eyepiece and the shutter was pressed. I believe the camera was on automatic exposure and focus for this picture. Holding the camera steady was the hardest part.
Venus Transit
Here are two pictures of the Venus transit across the face of the sun on June 8th, 2004. The picture was made in the early morning just after sunrise in Athens. I used a TeleVue 70mm refractor telescope equipped with a Baader solar filter. I merely aimed a point-and-shoot digital camera into the 17mm Vixen eyepiece, zoomed-out the camera lens to fill the frame with the sun, and pressed the shutter button.
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Mars after stacking |
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Sunspots |
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Venus transits Sun on June 8, 2004 |
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Venus transits Sun on June 8, 2004 |