I haven’t photographed the moon at this age, so here are some new lunar features for me. Read More
Category Archives: astrophotography
ISS solar transit
As the ISS orbits our planet, from time to time it passes in front of the sun for a given location.
https://www.calsky.com and https://transit-finder.com/ allow you to predict such transits for your location.
Last Saturday such a transit happened, and I was able to capture it:
A combination of all frames that captured the ISS.
Spring is here: Galaxies and Clusters
Springtime is galaxy time! After a frustrating friday night with incorrect mount setup, iAstroHub not working properly, which resulted in badly focussed and guided images, saturday evening proved much more successful:
Leo Triplet, M65, M65 and NGC3628, 25x120s, Astro-Physics 127mm f/8, Nikon D750, BackyardNikon, PHD2, Regim, Photoshop, Lightroom
The Leo triplet is a trio of galaxies which are physically near each other, a faint tidal tail can be seen to the upper left of M66, the lower right galaxy.
The distance to this galaxy group is about 35 million lightyears.
Venus and Mercury conjunction
Venus and Mercury conjunction in a hazy sky. Image taken with 300mm lens at f/5.6, 1/25s, ISO 400, cropped.
Andromeda Galaxy – M31
In Autumn the Andromeda galaxy is conveniently placed in the darkes part of the sky for my home, the eastern sky.
Due to the vibration prone location of my telescope on the top of our house, I had to throw away 2/3rds of the individual exposures due to trailed stars, so I ended up with only 22,5 minutes of data. Another possibility is, that the guiding didn’t work properly, calibration was suspiciously short.
Anyways, here is the Andromeda galaxy at 1016mm focal length, Nikon D750, 45x30s, ISO 1600, Astro-Physics 127mm f/8, Meade LXD 650 mount.
45x30s, Astro-Physics 127mm f/8, Nikon D750, ISO 1600, preprocessed and stacked in Regim, developed in Photoshop and Lightroom.
Total Solar Eclipse 2017
2nd Contact – Diamond Ring, Nikon D750, 1/160s, f/8.0, ISO 400, 600mm (300mm f/4 PF + TC-20E III)
The Moon and Sun two weeks before the 2017 solar eclipse
Two weeks before the moon will eclipse the sun, the moon was partially eclipsed by the Earth’s shadow
I had to turn around, when the road to my observing location was blocked, then I rushed to another spot, to find clouds on the horizon blocking the view for quite a while. But finally the still eclipsed moon emerged from the clouds and I was able to take some quick shots.
I used my 80mm refractor and a 300mm lens for the images.
Read MoreSunspot AR2665
Even though we are heading for a possibly deep and long solar minimum, a huge sunspot is visible on the sun right now.
Saturn and Jupiter, 2017-06-11
Jupiter gets lower and lower each night, while Saturn is nearing Opposition.
Saturn, Astro-Physics 127mm f/8 refractor, Televue 3x Barlow, QHY5L-IIc, 60% of 2259 frames.
Processed with Autostakkert (Stacking) , Registax (Wavelet Sharpening), Fitswork (de-noise and iterative Gauss sharpenging) and Photoshop (Color and Gamma adjustment).
Jupiter 6.6.2017
Due to a cold front that just had passed earlier today, the air was quite unstable. Therefore today’s shots turned out quite unsharp.
Astro-Physics 127mm f/8, 2x Vixen Barlow, QHY5L-IIc camera. Read More