Some Fun with the Moon

So on a recent night with the sky full of intermittent clouds I decided that I would return to our nearest neighbour, the moon. With such a bright target, it wasn't a huge issue when clouds passed in front as most of the time I could still make things out.

My first target of the night from the Lunar 100 was L20, a crater known as Posidonius. This floor fractured crater is located on the north-easter edge of Mare Serenitatis. The interesting thing I noted about this crater is that I could clearly see that the surface of this crater had some hilly elements and there was another semi-circular rim within the main rim.

Next up was L34, a plain of basaltic lava flows known as Lacus Mortis which is latin for "Lake of Death". In my image you can make out the prominent crater Bürg and beneath this you might be able to make out some darker lines which form part of an extensive system of criss-crossing rilles collectively designated Rimae Bürg. It was much clearer to see this visually but my webcam has at least picked up some of it.

My final target on the moon was L72 which is the dark-halo craters present on the floor of Atlas crater. I could clearly make out the darker patches when looking at the crater visually and even in the webcam image below you should be able to make them out.

I did attempt to use my recently purchased x2.5 Barlow and whilst it was much better than my previous barlow the image still wasn't great. Seeing conditions were pretty crap which didn't help, but i suspect it is just a mutlitude of issues adding up. Next on the list is a new webcam so we will see how that performs when I get it. After that I suspect I need to find a way to get better focus control.

One Last Look at Comet Lovejoy C/2014 Q2

Whilst I had already obtained an image of Comet Lovejoy C/2014 Q2 with my 55-250mm lens, I decided that I wanted to see if I could also get something through my 127 Mak. Luckily, there was an hour of clear skies on the 18th January and so I set up my rig and got to work. After a fair bit of trial and error I decided that the best I could do with 25 second subs and that is what I went with along with ISO 3200. Even with the 25 second subs only about 3 from the 10 were usable due to my rather un-astrophtographic mount.

Anyway, my results are below and I am happy enough despite the light pollution and noise (I took the pictures at ISO 3200). I think you can actually make out the hint of tail towards the 10 O'clock position.

A Few More Messier Objects

So recently when the skies have been clear I have been undertaking a fair bit of Astrophotography. However, I have not forgotten about visual astronomy as well and recently I decided to spend some time looking at a few Messier objects I had previously not seen before. The objects I ended up looking at were two Open Clusters in Auriga, Messier 36 and Messier 38 (Starfish Cluster).

Messier 36
RA: 5 36 Dec: +34 08
Type: Open Cluster
Magnitude: 6.3

Messier 36 is an Open Cluster approximately 4,100 light years away and 14 light years wide. This cluster was rather small in the eyepiece and despite there being up to 60 members I could only make out about 4 or 5. I did struggle a bit with the rather full Moon that was present as it really washed out the view making it hard to see any of the dimmer stars. The biggest surprise however was that I actually managed to pick up the cluster in my finder scope as a faint fuzzy patch.

Starfish Cluster (Messier 38)
RA: 5 29 Dec: +35 51
Type: Open Cluster
Magnitude: 7.4

At 4,200 light years away, the Starfish Cluster (Messier 38) is similar in distance from Earth as Messier 36. However, at 25 light years across it is bigger and this ensured it did appear as being bigger in my eyepiece. To my eyes the cluster had a definite X shape that gave the cluster a very interesting appearance. Again, the Moon did affect my ability to properly see it in all its glory but it was nice to still make it out.

I did also attempt to view Messier 37, which is another open cluster in the same area of the sky but due to how I had set up my telescope, the view was blocked by my house. Next time I will need to pay more attention to how I set up the telescope!

Comet Lovejoy C/2014 Q2 & The Moon

So Christmas has just passed but my birthday is in January so when my parents offered to get me an early birthday presnet I jumped at the chance of getting another Lens for my DSLR. The lens I got was a Canon 55-250mm STM lens which isn't going to be that useful with a fixed tripod due to the very limited exposure times I can use before star trailing occurs.

However in a moment of madness I decided to see if I could use it to capture Comet Lovejoy C/2014 Q2 which is currently quite low on the horizon. Amazingly with the lens set to 200mm I was able to pick it up at ISO 3200 with 2 second exposures. So I decided to stack 15 images together to produce a photograph of the comet which you can see below.

I love how the comet appears as a green hazy object, quite clearly distinct from the surrounding stars. The tail is fair to meagre for me to pick up, especially with the comet being so low in the horizon and with the moon being around. Maybe in a couple of weeks I will try it again and see what I can accomplish.

In addition this lens is always going to be useful for taking Moon images which I have already used it for as can be seen below.

Dark Skies & A Canon EOS 700D

So my first play with the Canon 700d had enabled me to get an image of the milky way but I wanted more so I recently headed out to Harperrig Reservoir which is reasonably dark and decided to take a few widefield images.

My first image was taken with my Samyang 14mm F2.8 Lens at ISO 3200 with the lens stopped down a few notches to try and reduce the orange background glow I was getting. It is basically just an extremely widefield shot of the Orion/Taurus region.

It is a nice enough image although in hindsight I should probably have lowered the ISO rather than stopping down the lens as I believe this would have reduced the noise a bit more. Ah well, this is all just one big learning experience anyway. Either way there is a lot here that I can play with in the future and I look forward to taking it to a proper dark site.

Next up is an image of Orion taken with my Olympus 50mm F1.8 Lens at ISO 3200 and with it  stopped down to F4. I was hoping that stopping it down would reduce both the coma and purple fringing I have noticed with this lens.

I love that I managed to pick up the Orion Nebula (Messier 42) although I am disappointed I managed to frame it so I didn't get the fully body of Orion but there will always be another time. There was still a little bit of purple fringing even at F4 but this was easy enough to remove with Photoshop. I decided to crop and enlarge the Orion Nebula element of the image because I love it!

My final target with the Pleiades (Messier 45) which is an Open Cluster in the constellation of Taurus. I once again used the Olympus 50mm F1.8 Lens at ISO 3200 with it  stopped down to F4.

To be honest, it is a bit small in the 50mm Lens but I did manage to pull out a slight amount of nebulosity in the image which I wasn't actually expecting. If you can't see the nebulosity that easily then hopefully the cropped and enlarged image below will highlight it better.

Overall I quite happy with all these images, especially as I am limited to a fixed tripod at the moment for them.

My first image of the Milkyway

So with my new Canon 700D & 14mm Samyang Lens I decided to try and see if I could pick up the milky way from my heavily light polluted back garden.

I will be honest and say my initial images were horrid, they were basically yellow! However, I took 10 x 30 Second ISO 3200 subs and used DeepSkyStacker, Photoshop & PixInsight to actually pull out an okay image with the Milky Way actually reasonably visible.

I am looking forward to taking the camera out to some actual dark sites as well as plugging it into my telescope but for now I am happy with what I have managed so far!

Christmas Bonanza!

So Santa went nuts for Christmas this year and provided me with lots of new bits and pieces for my Astronomy adventure so I thought I would share my new equipment with the world.

First up is something I have been in great need of which is some nice warm Quechua snow boots. There has been several times that I have been outside for only two hours and realised I can no longer feel my toes! I either cut my evening short or I end up suffering with rather sore feet as the feeling comes back to them whilst I drive home. Santa was pretty cheap with these boots to be honest as they only cost £10 and the basically look like welly boots. However, they have supposedly been tested down to -18C for someone is at rest so I am pretty confident they should do a much better job that my trainers have been doing.

Next up is my major present of the year which is a Canon EOS 700d. Finally I can stop borrowing my friends DSLR when I want to do some imaging and use my own. It comes with an 18-55mm STM lens which should be useful for basic things but I suspect this lens is more going to be used for daytime photography when I just want to take some quick pictures. To be honest, I am new to DSLR cameras so I think there will be a fair bit of learning to get through but I am looking forward to it.

I also recieved a prime lens which is the wonderful Samyang 14mm f/2.8 widefield lens which I hope to use for future milky way & constellation shots. I have read good reviews for this “budget” lens and whilst it is manual focus, this won’t really cause a problem for astrophotography shots as I can just set it to infinity focus.

My last camera related gift of Christmas is a tripod which means I can actually take some long exposure shots. One day I hope to get an EQ mount and fit the camera to that but for now a fixed tripod will at least enable to get some decent widefield shots. The tripod I received is a Red Snapper RST-283 & RSH-61 Ball Head which isn’t as expensive as some of the Manfrotto tripods but it seems to be well built and should be stable. The brief play around I have had with it has shown me that it may take me a while to get used to the movements of a ball head but it does offer a fair bit of flexibility in regards to moving the camera.

Santa didn’t forget my telescope either and my final gift of the year is a Skywatcher UHC filter. A few times recently I have contemplated that the views of various nebulas would potentially be enhanced by the use of an UHC filter. So now we shall see if I am right or not, I understand that dark skies are the best way to get better views but hopefully the UHC filter will still help the view from my back garden.