Astrophoto thread (your own photos please)

[Messierhunter]

More random shots:
NGC 7331

Omega Nebula

Crescent Nebula

Ring Nebula

 

[Poscik]

Hi!

ISS passing over central Poland today, at 20:25 (GMT+2). She was at altitude of 408km, and distance to station was ~450km. I think the best I've ever taken

 

[Messierhunter]

Hi!

ISS passing over central Poland today, at 20:25 (GMT+2). She was at altitude of 408km, and distance to station was ~450km. I think the best I've ever taken

Really, really well-done. Exceptionally clear!

 

[Unstung]

Took an acceptable photo of the September 2015 eclipse:

The website's image compression is ugly. Going to try another place to host my photos, after I finish going through all of them.

 

[steph]

Well ...this is a very amateur picture, but it is the very first time I managed to photograph anything other than the moon. It was taken with an older model Canon Powershot, at 48 x zoom (12 x optical, the rest digital), And , from that picture, I had to zoom in and crop it just to see those few pixels . It looks like crap, but I still couldn't believe my eyes that I managed to see details. That's Mars, right there. You can even see the polar caps (sort of :lol: )

 

[george7378]

The galactic core from a desert island in the Maldives:

(Canon 1100D, 30s @ ISO 3200, f/3.5)

 

[Messierhunter]

Some shots I took at the Fall Chiefland Star Party this past weekend:

 

[RisingFury]

Well ...this is a very amateur picture, but it is the very first time I managed to photograph anything other than the moon. It was taken with an older model Canon Powershot, at 48 x zoom (12 x optical, the rest digital), And , from that picture, I had to zoom in and crop it just to see those few pixels . It looks like crap, but I still couldn't believe my eyes that I managed to see details. That's Mars, right there. You can even see the polar caps (sort of :lol: )

I don't know, looks more like Chromatic aberration to me...

 

[steph]

Any idea what this star cluster is? It was quite close to Orion, but itl looked like it had risen a bit earlier. My guess is that it's a part of Taurus, but I'm not sure.

Edit: With the naked eye, it was tiny and barely visible. More like a fuzzy "thing" where you kinda notice there were a few stars.

 

[Col_Klonk]

Without much reference to go on, maybe you looking at these two constellations

 

[steph]

Could be, just that they didn't seem to be below Orion, but rather above. Maybe it's that star cluster around Aldebaran, though I haven't recognized that star itself. Not that I have much experience in astrophotography. I mistook Venus for Jupiter (there were some faint stars near it, invisible to the naked eye, and I mistook them for satellites :lol: ). But it had to be Venus, Jupiter wasn't even up at that time.

Edit: A wider angle photo . Orion is down, by the clouds, to the left of the pole.

 

[Col_Klonk]

Ah.. I see Orion is far away.. back in a moment

Back... It looks like the Pleiades Cluster (M45)
Close to equal distance from Orion-Aldebaran-M45 in your pic

I've had this Philips Deep Sky Observer map for a decade or so.. very useful
ISBN 0-540-08642-8

 

[PhantomCruiser]

Pleiades, nice picture btw. Here's their names. I think every major culture has some mythology to go along with them.

 

[Messierhunter]

Pleiades, nice picture btw.

Bingo. For future reference you can upload any image of the stars here to have it automatically solved and its position determined. You don't even need to give it any information about the general location or field of view (though in some tough cases that can help speed up the solution).
http://nova.astrometry.net/user_images/1438818#annotated

 

[Artlav]

Who turned down the sun again?

Sadly, i'm too far north to see the whole annular thing, but half-covered sun is going to be fun too.

---------- Post added at 17:10 ---------- Previous post was at 16:12 ----------

Ok, here is the maximum for here.
You can't really feel any difference in heat or brightness, so without a telescope it's as if nothing is going on.

 

[Kyle]

Getting more and more excited for August 21st looking at your photos Artlav

 

[Messierhunter]

First light test of an AO-7 adaptive optics system for my camera and telescope; it tracked like a champ with 5 minute exposures at the native 2000 mm focal length of my scope, which is quite difficult to do with an LX200 classic fork mount.

 

[MikeB]

First light test of an AO-7 adaptive optics system

Fascinating, Messierhunter. Is it possible for you to post a comparison with/without the adaptive optics?

 

[Messierhunter]

Fascinating, Messierhunter. Is it possible for you to post a comparison with/without the adaptive optics?

Unfortunately I didn't acquire images with the AO off during the first night's testing, I just wanted to maximize the time I had with it on. I do have an older image of M51 for comparison, but it's not apples-to-apples. The observing site was the same, and the total integration time was similar, but before the AO unit I took every shot with a .63 focal reducer; shooting at the full focal length of my telescope simply wasn't practical even with autoguiding. The latency and backlash of the drive system of the LX200 makes it virtually impossible to accurately autoguide fast enough at f/10. The AO unit has a response time of a fraction of a second and the very fast guiding rates make it possible to image at the full 2 meter focal length without a focal reducer. I took my older non-AO image of M51 and used bicubic sampling to resample it to the same size as my new higher resolution image of M51. Here's a gif overlay:

http://h.dropcanvas.com/ij5tf/aocomparison2.gif
You can see much more fine detail in the AO version, and note that the dimmest stars in the image are much brighter and sharper in the new AO version as well. Next time I have the AO unit attached I'll do a proper on/off comparison so everyone can see how badly blurred the stars are when using traditional autoguiding vs the AO at this focal length on the LX200 mount.

 

[Soheil_Esy]

First light test of an AO-7 adaptive optics system for my camera and telescope; it tracked like a champ with 5 minute exposures at the native 2000 mm focal length of my scope, which is quite difficult to do with an LX200 classic fork mount.

All your works are truly great! During my sleep last night, a voice told me the following:

With your new AO-7 adaptive optics system, you are certainly the one in this forum to be able to attempt the Man and Planets challenge: with Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn!:thumbup:

Man and Venus

http://0e33611cb8e6da737d5c-e13b5a9...2017-03-31-Man-and-Venus-01_1490920939_lg.png
http://spaceweathergallery.com/indi...d=134363&PHPSESSID=3qj7518dfrb7pc3ia3m7kgemp0
Taken by Vladimir Scheglov on March 31, 2017 @ Magadan, Russia


Details:

After several attempts we were able to shoot my friend Alexander Korolenko during the rise of Venus. The distance between us was about 3300 m. Shot in the area of ​​the Armanskiy pass, near Magadan. Thanks to Sergey Shibetskiy for the transport.
Camera Panasonic GH2, Rubinar 1000 mm, F10 lens. Frames from video:

Video

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozBLTxleh-8"]2017 03 31 Человек на фоне Венеры [/ame]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozBLTxleh-8​