Solar Pinhole Observations

Posted on 04/04/2015 by philipp

Most people don’ t realize that the bright spots below a tree in the grass are actually images of the sun formed by small holes created through overlapping leaves in the tree’s branches. Because the sun is a sphere, the images are also circular (depending of the angle of the surface).

A similar situation occurs when the sun shines through the small holes in blinds – round images of the sun are projected against the foor or wall. The images become interesting when the sun’s disk is obscured by something, e.g. the moon during a solar eclipse or trees when the sun is rising or setting on a wooded horizon. Read More →

Rima Hyginus et. al.

Posted on 28/03/2015 by philipp

Rima Hyginus and Rimae Triesnecker

The Bright and Dark side of the moon

Posted on 26/03/2015 by philipp

On March, 24th the young moon was visible in the western sky. The clear air provided a good opportunity to capture the dark side of the moon which is actually illuminated by the earth which is big and bright in the lunar sky.

Partial Solar Eclipse – 20.3.2015

Posted on 21/03/2015 by philipp

While travelling to the Faroe islands or to Svalbard was out of the question, I was able to take a day off for the solar eclipse of March 20th 2015.

The Vorarlberger Amateur Astronomen (VAA) organized an eclipse observation in cooperation with the Pfänder-Bahn at the summit of the Pfänder mountain above Bregenz. Thanks to Kurt Gattnar, who managed the organization from the VAA side, we had a very enjoyable experience. Even carts for our equipment were available! Read More →

Lunar Terminator 2015-02-25

Posted on 28/02/2015 by philipp

The moon is always a very regarding target. Even though the slow frame rate of the QHY5 (3FPS!) and the missing IR-Cut Filter do degrade the quality of the final image, some nice detail is visible in this mosaic of three individual avi files. 100 frames out of 400 were used for every frame.

The trio of Theophilus, Cyrillus und Catharina craters at upper left and the Ariadaeus Rille at lower right are prominent features visible in this image. On the floor of the Mare tranquillitatis at lower left some subtle mare ridges are vsible.

Moon, Venus and Mars

Posted on 20/02/2015 by philipp

Tonight the western horizon is dazzlingly beautiful as the Moon, Venus and Mars shine brillantly in the clear air near the horizon.

M81, M82 and Jupiter

Posted on 20/02/2015 by philipp

At first I had to wait for about two hours until the floodlights on the adjacent soccer field were turned off, then I had trouble locating the galaxies as the 6×30 finder is not really adequate in a light polluted sky, then came problems with the connection from BackyardNikon to the camera, and when everything was set up correctly, the guiding was not working properly, resulting in trailed images… so quite a lot of effort went into this picture, but of course a lot has been learned.

M42 & Lovejoy

Posted on 11/02/2015 by philipp

At last the sky was reasonably clear to try out my new toy. In fact the Astro-Physics 127mm f/8 refractor is not exactly new, as it was manufactured in 1989, so I was even more curious as how it would perform.

The Super Polaris mount is definitely overwhelmed with the weight of the big, long refractor, but on a windstill evening it works tolerably well. As this was basically a test, and I didn’t want to make matters even more complicated, I didn’t use any autoguiding, and therefore limited the individual exposure times to 30s. I had to throw away about half of the epxosures due to tracking errors, but 14 exposures looked good enough to use. Transparency was pretty bad, a slight haze due to the freezing cold air and smoke from wood-powered heating combined with the light pollution of the rhine valley made the sky very bright. In the color version, the sky looks quite murky, I like the black and white rendition better:

M42, 14x30s Nikon D7000 ISO 1600, Astro-Physics 127mm f/8

The Moon 2015-02-06

Posted on 07/02/2015 by philipp

With temperatures below freezing and a strong cold wind biting into the flesh of my hands I retreated to the warm inside of the house after only a few minutes, this is a stack of 6 shots using Autostakkert.

AP 127mm f/8, Nikon D7000, ISO 1000, 1/400s

13.1.2015 Mercury and Venus conjunction

Posted on 15/01/2015 by philipp

Venus and Mercury above the swiss mountains.

After work I rode my bicycle towards Liechtenstein (a very small country next to Vorarlberg, the Austrian province where I live in), to catch the Mercury/Venus conjunction next to the Egelsee. As I only had my RX100 compact camera with me, the focal length was rather limited. To pass the time for the sky to darken I took some shots of the pond.

Philipp Salzgeber photography

Category Archives: astrophotography