Osbourne One-Nil
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Posts posted by Osbourne One-Nil
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You can get some fantastic telescopes for far less than the Astrotrac - you'll get him hooked.
Here's the Orion Nebula....quite pleased seeing as I haven't learnt to focus properly yet, the exposure's all wrong, I don't know how to process and was limited to the worst possible settings on the camera. Looking forward to getting out of the village with it.
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Air frost here tonight; currently -0.3º.
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You don't need a telescope for photos like this though. In fact, I'm tempted to sell one of my big telescopes. I bought a very compact, collapsible 10" reflecting telescope a couple of years ago, mainly so my son and I could walk out of the village and have an evening out in the surrounding fells. However, my new mount and camera is even more compact and transportable, and you come home with a momento. I could invest that money into a lovely nice prime lens....or I could keep it all and be greedy.
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Oh yes, but I don't have one. It's on order though and should be here tomorrow. Tonight, therefore, I'm still restricted to 1min exposures, but have already managed quite a nice one of the Pleiades again, and one very quick one looking towards Orion with a 28mm lens and trees in the way, but you can still see the Orion Nebula (M42). I'll zoom in later and try again once it's cleared the trees.
I've also attached a 1min exposure of the Pleiades without the mount tracking, to show what a difference it makes, even over a short time-span.
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Heading out in a moment and going to aim to get a 5 min exposure of the Pleiades and directly overhead where to double cluster is in Perseus. That's assuming it stays clear and I can find a way to hold the shutter open for a few minutes.
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I was amazed too - just 60 second exposures....can't wait for a stack of lots of 20mins etc!
The Astrotrac itself is about £400 and I took that photo on a Manfrotto tripod. The Astrotrac is rated at 15kg, which is far above the tripod, so that's the limiting factor. If you've already got a tripod and head, the only additional thing you'd need would be a ball mount for the camera itself. The set-up takes some getting your head around (or at least it did me) but I got those photos within minutes of pressing the button, so it's a very shallow learning curve.
In the near future, I'll be putting my Televue refracting telescope on the mount (but on an astronomical tripod) and shooting through that...in effect a 600mm lens. Should be good.
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I treated myself to a special sort of camera mount the other day called an Astrotrac. It's basically a way of having a camera track stars or planets for up to two hours, very accurately. This enables long exposure photos of the night sky to be taken, which captures very faint stars, nebulae, galaxies etc.
There was a clear patch tonight, so my son and I quickly set the mount up, pointed the camera at what we hoped would be the Pleiades, and then directly overhead, set the mount running, and took a one minute exposure of each view. The mount will track for up to two hours, but until I receive my remote shutter release, I can only manage one minute. Quite pleased with the results really, considering they were taken at ISO1600 and have only received very basic editing in Photoshop to remove the worst of the noise.
You can just about make out some nebulosity around the Pleiades and some darker lanes within the Milky Way.
Can't wait to be able to spend some proper time outside with it.
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I quite enjoyed it.
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New thread available - if anyone's interested.
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Just a suggestion, but when people comment on some aspect of a chart, like PV much further west, etc,could they also perhaps give a quick summary as to what that means in terms of what might result?
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I'm sure we're all getting sick and tired of the off topic posts in this thread, so why not go and be off topic in the new one?
http://forum.netweather.tv/topic/72261-model-discussion-january-17th/
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I love this time of day - I think it's the anticipation that keeps me going; the not knowing what is about to happen...will it be an exciting outcome, or a bitter disappointment? Oh I love it. So while I settle down to watch Deal or No Deal, you can all talk about the models.
Stay on topic and don't argue.
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Well that's a first....been out with my telescope tonight and my hands stuck to my crutches as I picked them back up. Brrrrrrrrrrrrr. -4.7º right now, but Jupiter looking stunning.
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Wash your mouth out - this is WestmorlandUnusual for native Cumbrians. -
If you could all stick to talking about the model output and use the other available threads for anything else, it would give my inbox a rest!
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-2.1º here still. Some of the locals are eaven wearing long sleeves.
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-4.8º minimum last night giving the 17th air frost of the winter so far.
Currently -3.3º and crystal clear. Looks like a good night tonight for Stargazing Live too.
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Next person to have a post removed will get a 48hr suspension.
(out of the three mentioned earlier btw!)
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That's like me saying people are too grumpy and they should lighten up. I hope your post was heavy on the irony?I think it is in times like this where people can actually over analyze things. I think the best approach recently would be to go by one time period run day to day.
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The temperature's risen over 2º in the past three hours, from a low of -2.7º earlier on. It's still clear out there, so what's going on?!
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Yes, that's right, just as the north of England thread covers anywhere from Derbyshire up to the Scottish Borders, etc. When the weather gets more interesting, we'll bring back the smaller regions, but while nothing much is happening, they weren't proving viable.
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I'm just fascinated by primitive communities living in isolated settlements, because I live in one myself. I remember during the Icelandic volcano problems, the Isle of Man shut down its air space until the fire-breathing pixie stopped blowing smoke out of his magic pipe.
-1.7º here already.
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Bottesford has compiled a post showing the times of all the runs of all the models....whatever that means.
http://forum.netweather.tv/topic/72242-model-output-update-times/
Astrophotography With A Dslr
in Archived non-weather Photography
Posted
For less than £100, I don't think you could do better than this. The single most important factor of a telescope is its aperture; the larger that is, the more light it collects, the more detail it will resolve and the more is will show you. That scope gives you a 3" aperture (the telescope I use the most is "just" a 3.5"), and will show the rings of Saturn, Jupiter's moons and cloud belts, bright nebulae and the Moon will look stunning. Almost as importantly, its mount is stable and if the mount isn't stable, you can't see a thing. The main downside is it doesn't look like a "proper" telescope, but it is! Everything but the moon will look very small through it, but then most things look very small through any telescope - the photos you see on TV are very misleading.
If there's any money left over, I'd also recommend this book. It aimed to accompany a small telescope and describes what you're looking at in a way which actually allows you to comprehend what you're seeing.