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Lightning is a natural for this, Plasma. Flame arcs are fine, too, Uranus

cool, thanks.
I kinda went off topic on this one to break away from the overload of obvious, and reckon the pic will tank in the voting, but I like it…. 😛

Just remember you’ll probably be facing caradoc’s amazing lightning pictures, and he’s pretty stiff competition in that arena. 😛

(I have a couple obvious ones, too, but I’m hoping sheer intensity counts for something.)

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Lightning is a natural for this, Plasma. Flame arcs are fine, too, Uranus

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LOL Me three 🙂

ROTF, actually, I think you’re #4, counting linguine.

What, is everyone after me and just peeved someone out there beat them to the punch? 😕 😛

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Boobies?

Um…presuming that last week’s entry was Kestrana, and ya’ll are getting married, I don’t think boobies are your challenge. And if they weren’t K’s, and yet you live, then more of the same. See my PM.

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Orionid, I have filter envy.

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<oo>

So…either the theme description is so clear that there’s nothing to ask questions about, or I’ve been boycotted.

(The last time I was boycotted, I was a boy scout wannabe on a camping trip.)

Hope it’s a good sign that there isn’t much discussion here.

For at least one entry, I’ve brought my game, enough to challenge even Orionid.

//of course, saying so dooms me to failure.

But no matter. I’m no longer interested in winning, as per se, as I am keeping up my averages. And that, I think I can do.

Looking forward to seeing everyone’s shots!

//edit to fix the ascii eyes. If it fails, such is life.

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I should add that I’m only an egg when it comes to astroshooting, I don’t have nearly the toys I’d like, and much like camera lenses, filters and equipment is fairly costly to come by. I bought my scope after selling my condo, so I had a lot of cash at the time to spend on the scope, but didn’t get all the toys I’d like to have.

Since they cut the OT at work last year, and on my base pay, I’m lucky I can pay rent, all my hopes and dreams of fancier equipment are waiting on the lottery.

Oh, and you can get the Moon, Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn without anything more than the scope itself, even if it doesn’t track at all–the exposure times are short enough that they don’t move in the time it takes to expose them. You don’t even need an adapter–just hold the camera up to the telescope lens (but don’t touch it). Deep sky stuff, though, needs tracking.

I don’t know what you’re looking to spend, but if I could buy another scope specifically for astrophotography and money weren’t nearly the issue it is, I’d look at something like this, which has a 4.2 focal ratio and would get much brighter images:

http://www.celestron.com/c3/product.php?CatID=107&ProdID=663

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There are adapters for DSLRs that replace the lens with a telescope eyepiece mount. I have a canon adapter but Nikons are available. This is prime focus photography; essentially the telescope is your lens (thus I say ‘I took that shot with a 2800mm lens’). Here’s a link to Celestron’s page; other telescope manufacturers have much the same:

http://www.celestron.com/c3/page.php?PageID=437

My telescope (Celestron CPC 1100) has a whole section on how to do astrophotography, but there’s also plenty of links on the interweb. Here’s one:

http://www.covingtoninnovations.com/dslr/EOS300Dastro.html

Happens to be for Canon, which I have, but the general rules are the same for any camera. There’s links on Covington’s stie to others, or just Google it.

You will, if possible, want an equatorial mount rather than alt-az, else field rotation limits exposure times (the stars will appear to spin about a central axis). With the equatorial, you won’t have that issue and can take pictures even up to hours long (but it’s better to take shorter exposures and stack them using registax or other software.)

As I still don’t have an eq. mount, I’m limited in what I can do, but I’ve had pretty good results even without the ability to stack (In the gallery you can find some of my shots.)

‘Seeing’, the term for turbulence in the atmosphere, will affect the clarity of your shots, and focusing can be a real challenge–though I’ve heard Nikons are easier than Canons in this respect. Stacking also reduces this problem, especially for planets, which require rather short exposures as they are relatively very bright in a scope compared to things like nebulae and galaxies.

If you have a local astronomy club, you can probably join them for a night and someone there with experience (and probably more than I) can show you how it’s done, and help you decide if you want to invest in it.

As for scopes, Newtonians are said to be rather good, but any will do, so long as you have a mount that can withstand the weight of the DSLR comfortably. Look for ones with wider field of views; I have a Schmidt-Cass scope and one of the problems with a 2800mm focal length telescope in prime is that I’m limited to less than the moon’s width of a view. I’ve helped this situation considerably with a reducer lens for my scope, reducing the focal length by 1/3 to about 1800mm, and widening the field of view to over 1/2 a degree, allowing full moon shots. It also decreases my f/ratio from 10 to 6.67, so I can take shots of less duration with results of much brighter images.

And it’s worth it to have a light pollution reduction filter (LPR), which really helps with the image colors yet doesn’t really lengthen the necessary exposure length much.

Alternately, there are adaptors to mount your lens to the telescope and view through regular telescope eyepieces, but I’ve heard it’s harder to find ones for DSLRs. However, it’s fairly easy with P+S’s, and with stacking software you can get really good results.

This link to Celestron’s FAQ on my particular telescope has some good Q/As on astro shooting:

http://www.celestron.com/c3/product.php?CatID=9&ProdID=37

You can also piggyback your camera on the scope to allow long exposures of fuller sky views without star trailing.

Stacking is pretty much required to get stuff like you see from Hubble out of a ground based scope, without it, though you can get some decent shots–but I’ve found these don’t impress a world that has become accustomed to Hubble images.

On the other hand, you might. Here’s a full size, totally unedited shot of the moon, jpg version, about 1.5 megs:

http://fossilspringsaz.com/pics/2011/jan/02/img_3210.jpg

Contrast adjustments, sharpening, and resizing etc gets better results:

http://fossilspringsaz.com/pics/2011/jan/02/moonlg.jpg[/list]

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See my response to you on facebook, cloud.

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Nothing like new toys! Some great shots there.

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Anybody got a sling? I think I might’ve sprained something patting myself on the back. 🙂

<–Has a sling.

//not the one to which you refer. 😆

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For whatever reason, the camera does *not* want to focus on her….Got some really awesome shots. All of them sharp as a tack. Except the ones of her. For whatever reason the camera kept wanting to focus *over there*.

Oh, I have family members for which I’d LOVE to have this problem!! Somehow, the ugly ones in my tree always come out sharp as a tack, requiring much p’shopping to remove moles and warts, and add in missing teeth. 🙁

//joking!

///Not joking.

////congrats on the win!

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Be vewy very quiet….

I can has Alka Seltzer? by pjern, on Flickr

Hah! That’s funny. I actually LOL’d.

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Not ONLY am I not drinking, I’m WORKING!! Eesh. But happy new year to all!!

//at least it’s OT plus holiday pay.

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^what she said^

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