Getting into astrophotography

[Lane Meyer]

Wow Fuzz, you really are stepping it up man! These latest ones are really incredible!

edit - here's a star shot I just finished, from Wednesday night looking out over Truckee from Martis Peak.

[bklyn]

Fuzz and Lane, you guys are killing it. Very nice!

[Fuzz]

edit - here's a star shot I just finished, from Wednesday night looking out over Truckee from Martis Peak.

That is sweet! Shot details? For some reason I can never get such nice clean star trails. Tried some the other night, and they came out either too bright, too dark, or too noisy. Since the moon is getting fuller, I'll have to pause deep-space imaging and try star trails again.

[Lane Meyer]

That is sweet! Shot details? For some reason I can never get such nice clean star trails. Tried some the other night, and they came out either too bright, too dark, or too noisy. Since the moon is getting fuller, I'll have to pause deep-space imaging and try star trails again.

Hey Fuzz (and Brklyn) thanks..as for details, the shot is a blend of twelve 300 second exposures at f/3.5, ISO 160 @ 16mm. I started with a "framing" exposure to check composition and sharpness at dusk, wide open at ISO 3200 to check that the focus was sharp on the far horizon and on some brighter stars that were already visible, then I dialed in my settings and set my remote to 300 seconds exposure with 1 second interval. Then I sat back and sipped some nice singlemalt while the camera did it's thing.

In post, I "developed" all 12 shots for the sky/stars, and combined them all via lighten-mode layers. I then took the first shot in the sequence and re-processed it for the foreground (moonlit), and blended the two (stars and foreground) with gradients/masks to achieve what you see above.

One critical thing I did was use a 30 year old metal tripod and pile rocks on the legs, and of course mirror-lockup (live view) is also key.

Really hoping to get out and do more of these this weekend and next week.

[Lane Meyer]

Went out again last night, looking over Downtown Truckee from double secret location. Same recipe as the last one, but the moonlight was brighter so I stopped down to f/6.3, 3.75 minutes, ISO 200. Exposure blend of 16 shots exposed for the stars and 1 for the bright lights of Truckee.

[skibumnh]

A guy I work with was just educating me on this stuff. He was really into it at one point, had a DSLR with a modded sensor that had the IR filter removed from it, and a special auto-tracking servo that the scope was mounted at. He could point it at any object in the sky and it would track that spot all night - it sounded expensive. Of all the stuff he told me about, the sun photography was most interesting to me. He showed me some images he took with a Hydrogren Alpha telescope and they were amazing...

http://www.meade.com/product_pages/c...o/coronado.php

http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/home.html

[kidwoo]

Nice stuff G. Sorry I missed you guys the other night.

[Lane Meyer]

Thanks dude, let's go out again one night this week!

[kidwoo]

I'd love to....(especially right now since I've got some broken bones). I'm out of town this week starting tomorrow. Sounds like I'll probably see you fri night though.... But yeah especially with these earlier nights, we should get out some.

[Fuzz]

Lane, thanks for the technical details on those star-trail shots. I'm going to make another attempt either tonight or tomorrow (depending on clouds).

[Lane Meyer]

Lane, thanks for the technical details on those star-trail shots. I'm going to make another attempt either tonight or tomorrow (depending on clouds).

Sure thing Fuzz. here's two more from me:



Middle Velma Lake



Speedboat Beach

[kidwoo]

You pop a flash during that last one? That looks too bright to be from the houses.

[Lane Meyer]

You pop a flash during that last one? That looks too bright to be from the houses.

Headlamp.

[kingsskier]

wow this thread is captivating to say the least

[SchralphMacchio]

good lord fuzz, I'm reviewing these in better detail now and I'm really digging them. M31 through the lens is mindblowing as I had no idea that was even possible.

Loving M17, M42, pillars of creation.


Lane that last shot of the milky way. you're really getting the settings & processing dialed and it looks great. I like the foreground rocks but I think the hotspot on the sand is a little bit distracting.

[Fuzz]

Lane, I'm consistently impressed by how clean your images are (clean = low noise, smooth/sharp trails, even illumination). I may have to get out of town to get anything even close (I always get uneven illumination/hot-spots along the horizon).

M31 through the lens is mindblowing as I had no idea that was even possible.

Yes, M31 is a huge galaxy that spans the width of 6 full moons. It is the farthest object visible to the naked eye (I can see it quite easily from my moderately dark skies). Around this time of year, go out around 8 or 9pm, face north-east and look up about 45 degrees. You should be able to see the constellation Cassiopeia, a sideways "W" (with the "legs" of the W facing east/right). Follow the direction pointed by the upper leg about 10 degrees (width of a fist held at arm's length) -- you'll see a fuzzy patch (may take 15-20 minutes for eyes to get dark-adapted to notice it at first). It is very easily visible with binoculars as well.

You can easily capture it with just about any camera on a static tripod. This is a stack of 5 frames, 30-sec each, f/3.5, ISO1600, 18mm, captured from a static tripod:


I have a few more images that I'll post up later tonight.

[Fuzz]

Click for larger versions...

Andromeda re-edit for better color:


NGC 891 -- I was very pleasantly surprised to have captured the faint tendrils of dust escaping from the central disk:


Pinwheel Galaxy: Very short exposure, so the noise was unavoidable. Unfortunately it's off-season for this target now (too low in the sky), so will have to wait until next summer to add more data:


Triangulum Galaxy re-edit: My previous edit had a lot of noise, especially around the edges of the galaxy. With better dark matching, I was able to get a lot more detail out of it:


Star trails over Williams Fork Mountains: Clouds kept rolling in and out, creating interruptions in the trails:


The Seven Sisters (partial): Part of the Pleiades open cluster. Btw, Subaru is Japanese for Pleiades, and their logo is based on this cluster (but short by one star):

[SchralphMacchio]

damn fuzz, what's your flickr stream? I wanna subscribe

[Lane Meyer]

Page 4 bump for all of Fuzz's dope star shots.

Here's one I shot at Dawn Saturday.

[Lonnie]

Tried a little of this while at Bryce over the weekend and I will say it's harder than it looks.



And here is what happens when you aim too high and you zoom slips.

ENGAGE WARP DRIVE!!!!

[Southeast Maggot]

^^^accident or no, that warp drive pic is very, very cool.

[Alaskan Rover]

Tried a little of this while at Bryce over the weekend and I will say it's harder than it looks.



And here is what happens when you aim too high and you zoom slips.

ENGAGE WARP DRIVE!!!!

Wow!! I LOVE that last pic!

When I was a kid, I had a 10" newtonion reflector telescope with an equatorial mount and a programmable right ascension/declination motor drive "Star Drive". I tried my hand at astrophotography with it, and had some cool results with the drive engaged...great pictures of the rings of Saturn and Jupiter's Great Red Spot and some fuzzy nebulae pix. But my absolute favorites were always taken when the drive was disengaged...either by mistake or on purpose.

I had some really cool time-lapse images of the moon as it progressed across the sky, and some other rotational pix of the stars similar to your last pic, none of which I can find now...as they've seem to be enveloped by some transient black hole that follows me around and gobbles socks, wallets and other things of import.

I wish I had digital cameras back then...as I always had to wait days and weeks for the film to be developed...many times to be disappointed at the results. Nowadays, the results are instantaenous upon the viewfinder and you can "delete" with equanimity.

What set-up do you use? I'm in the market for a used Canon 1D, so that I can adapt some of my larger 600mm and over lenses from my F-1 mechanical to the EOS/EF system. The genuine Canon FD-EF adapter is VERY hard to find, though.

Unfortunately, I no longer have that 10" newtonion reflector telescope...the damn thing was way to big to cart off to college and by the time I got back, it was long gone. Waaahhhh!

[kidwoo]

I'm am so going to try to figure out a way to dupilcate that effect in a timelapse.

[Fuzz]

Here's one I shot at Dawn Saturday.

Very colorful. Really like the bright green trees in lower right.

And here is what happens when you aim too high and you zoom slips.

ENGAGE WARP DRIVE!!!!

That has to be one of the coolest star shots I've seen. How long of an exposure was it?

Here are a few more recent ones (several x-posted elsewhere)...

Horsehead + Flame Nebulae:


Ship to Orion (first light with the Sigma 10-20mm):


These next three are with the Canon 28-300mm L lens...

Pleiades:




Orion, Running Man, Horsehead, and Flame Nebulae:

[Lonnie]

That has to be one of the coolest star shots I've seen. How long of an exposure was it?

Thx Fuzz. I'll have to check on the exp when I get home since I've managed to strip the exif info out of it. But I'd guess on the order of 30-60 seconds, f/4 and iso 1600 if memory serves....