ZeroID
02-06-2010, 08:38 PM
...made me do it.
Ok, so I've like many I have just gotten back into Astronomy with my 114mm El Cheapo Chinese Newt. I'm also a long time Photographer of motor sports and things so naturally I want to take pics. I own a Konica Minolta 7D DSLR which is very adaptable settings wise and I know it well.
So tonight after a week or so of wet we get a clear as night sky, even in my light polluted sky it has been washed sparkling clean. My 10x50 binocs find a soft fuzzy spot just up by the Crux. I have already cooled the scope out on the deck so that is lined up on what Stellarium has told me is Nebula NGC 3766. I grab the Sony and the tripod with a 70-200 zoom on. Set it for 1600 ISO, 10 secs at f5.6 with a 10 second start delay ( to clear any vibrations ) and point in the general direction of my intended victim.
It is a single frame in fine mode but guess what ? I got a pic out of it. Fuzzy it may be but I can now see that a series of shorter exposures stacked up might actually give me a real pic ! This was only taken in jpeg, next time I'll go RAW and see what can be done. But it just shows you, you don't have to have huge resources to actually capture something you can learn from. I spent about an hour comparinga nd identifying the various blobs of light I got. Got to find a dark site and give it a real go !!
The little fuzzy spot that the three diagonally lined up stars point to is the Neb. (just in case you didn't notice.)
I've identified most of the stars visible in this shot and the bigger original but now the incentive is to improve the technique and the images.
Goldarned clouds ....
http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll184/Zero-ID/NGC3766-2-6-10.jpg
Ok, so I've like many I have just gotten back into Astronomy with my 114mm El Cheapo Chinese Newt. I'm also a long time Photographer of motor sports and things so naturally I want to take pics. I own a Konica Minolta 7D DSLR which is very adaptable settings wise and I know it well.
So tonight after a week or so of wet we get a clear as night sky, even in my light polluted sky it has been washed sparkling clean. My 10x50 binocs find a soft fuzzy spot just up by the Crux. I have already cooled the scope out on the deck so that is lined up on what Stellarium has told me is Nebula NGC 3766. I grab the Sony and the tripod with a 70-200 zoom on. Set it for 1600 ISO, 10 secs at f5.6 with a 10 second start delay ( to clear any vibrations ) and point in the general direction of my intended victim.
It is a single frame in fine mode but guess what ? I got a pic out of it. Fuzzy it may be but I can now see that a series of shorter exposures stacked up might actually give me a real pic ! This was only taken in jpeg, next time I'll go RAW and see what can be done. But it just shows you, you don't have to have huge resources to actually capture something you can learn from. I spent about an hour comparinga nd identifying the various blobs of light I got. Got to find a dark site and give it a real go !!
The little fuzzy spot that the three diagonally lined up stars point to is the Neb. (just in case you didn't notice.)
I've identified most of the stars visible in this shot and the bigger original but now the incentive is to improve the technique and the images.
Goldarned clouds ....
http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll184/Zero-ID/NGC3766-2-6-10.jpg