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I figured out my camera focus issues last night. It wasn't that the focal length needed to be longer, it actually needed to be shorter. I took the t-adapter off and attached the camera t-ring directly to the 2" threaded eyepiece on the telescope and was able to get it to focus. All of my lenses/Barlow 2x/filters are 1.25", unfortunately...
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Oct 19, 2014 14:55
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Saturn is setting too early into twilight to be visible as of the 25th, so if you want to take one last look at it you might want to in the next day or two. Of course it'll be visible again really early in the morning as of late November or so, but early mornings aren't really my thing...
Vladimir Poutine fucked around with this message at 23:28 on Oct 21, 2014 |
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Oct 21, 2014 23:02
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Man, this sunspot group is huge. Like, almost terrfiyingly big. Crackling with solar flares today, too. I looked at it for a few minutes through my telescope, but didn't get lucky enough to see a white-light flare. Last one I can remember being this big was the one in 2003 that made the Halloween auroras. Maybe going for a repeat of the spooky red and green auroras this year?
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Oct 22, 2014 22:57
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Eclipse pics! Had *just* the right amount of clouds for this one, I think.  Eclipse by venusian-weasel, on Flickr Eclipse by venusian-weasel, on Flickr Horned Sunset by venusian-weasel, on Flickr
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Oct 24, 2014 01:42
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Venusian Weasel posted:Eclipse pics! All three are awesome, but that first one is just 
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Oct 24, 2014 02:30
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I'm super excited. Just moved to upstate NY and have a terrific night sky without any light pollution. I also just purchased my first mount (a lightly used Orion Atlas) which showed up yesterday. Gonna set it up this weekend and mount my Canon 400mm on the baby. Still sussing out some of the details (how to operate it, how to actually mount the DSLR, etc) but those should be minor hiccups. SO EXCITED 
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Oct 24, 2014 19:37
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polyfractal posted:I'm super excited. Just moved to upstate NY and have a terrific night sky without any light pollution. I also just purchased my first mount (a lightly used Orion Atlas) which showed up yesterday. Gonna set it up this weekend and mount my Canon 400mm on the baby. Still sussing out some of the details (how to operate it, how to actually mount the DSLR, etc) but those should be minor hiccups. Sweet, what are you planning to get pictures of?
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Oct 24, 2014 20:33
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Venusian Weasel posted:Sweet, what are you planning to get pictures of? Was planning to image some of the higher magnitude, "beginner" objects like Andromeda, Triangulum, M81/M82, and the North American Nebula. Luneshot also posted a nice list of messier objects a few pages back that I'm planning on working through over the next few months 
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Oct 25, 2014 12:44
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Most of my observing has been done with a basic 8" dob, so forgive me if any of this sounds dumb since I don't know much about all the fancy computerized scopes out there. Our club has an observatory a little bit out of the city, but it hasn't gotten a lot of use due to the membership generally being composed of rich greybeards with their own private observatories under darker skies. We're starting to attract new blood now, and while there's quite a bit of light pollution to the north, it's still a decent site for beginning observers during a new moon. We took my partner's high-school astronomy class out there this weekend, and they had a blast. We currently have a 12" LX200 Classic out there, and I'm wondering what kind of options there are for modernization. Being able to control the scope with personal devices would be pretty neat, and since it gets down to -30C in the winter, it'd be awesome if we could hook it up to the computer we have in the adjacent warm room. Would it really be as simple as getting one of these with the accompanying software to get the ability to link up computers, tablets and the like for control, or am I missing something really obvious? I know that getting actual imaging to a device in the warm room will be considerably more complicated and expensive, but just how bad are we talking for something like that?
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Oct 27, 2014 21:01
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polyfractal posted:Was planning to image some of the higher magnitude, "beginner" objects like Andromeda, Triangulum, M81/M82, and the North American Nebula. Luneshot also posted a nice list of messier objects a few pages back that I'm planning on working through over the next few months Well, I tried to do some astrophotography over the weekend  Been very cloudy here, but there was a break of clear skies last night. I setup all the equipment, which took a lot longer than I expected. Started to do a three-star alignment and found my camera pointing in the entirely wrong direction. Dug out the instructions and re-positioned everything, started to align again....and clouds had rolled in. Also lots of dew, so apparently I need to work on a dew warmer system too. Sooo, no images, but it was a good learning experience. Next time should setup a lot easier now that I know how all the components work.
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Oct 28, 2014 17:08
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I've been having some fun (and frustration) setting up my new mount for tracking. More than likely my polar alignment is off, as the mount finds stars all right but even exposures at 10sec show trails/blur towards the horizon. I've gotta figure out how to use Celestron's "All Star" polar alignment tool, that might help. I did find out that I'm able to image Andromeda from my house, even with all of the light pollution. I'm really excited for later this winter when I can take the telescope up north. If I figure out the tracking issues, I'll definitely have pictures to post.
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Oct 28, 2014 19:23
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Ran outside to try and catch the ISS fly by earlier by there were a bunch of clouds in the way  , I did manage to find Cosmos 1603 which I guess is an old soviet spy satellite. These Bushnell 10x50's are great.
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Oct 29, 2014 00:55
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What's the best resource to find out when the ISS is going to be visible from certain locations?
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Oct 31, 2014 20:08
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Golden-i posted:What's the best resource to find out when the ISS is going to be visible from certain locations? I signed up for the Nasa Spot the Station emails. http://spotthestation.nasa.gov/
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Oct 31, 2014 20:23
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Golden-i posted:What's the best resource to find out when the ISS is going to be visible from certain locations? I just downloaded the ISS spotter app. It seems to work really well.
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Nov 1, 2014 03:24
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 My first legit astrophoto! M42 Orion Nebula, because it was an easy target and I was having difficulties with my mount. 55x20s lights, 10x20s darks. Canon 7D + 400mm f/5.6 on an Orion Atlas. I'm already cringing at tons of things in the image, and can see where I made all sorts of mistakes during the capture and processing, but I'm pretty happy for a first try. This hobby is going to be the death of my free time I'm afraid.
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Nov 6, 2014 02:55
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polyfractal posted:
Aside from the missed focus, it looks really good. Colors seem accurate for the most part (maybe a touch too red) and you've done a fine job capturing some of the fainter nebulosity. Don't be so down on yourself.
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Nov 6, 2014 03:02
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Man I've been all sorts of interested in radio astronomy lately and I can't really explain why. I'm probably not going to do anything serious, but it looks like there are lots of things you can do to have some fun observing the sun and satellites and things like that. Part of me wants to build a stationary rig but there's no chance I'm waiting ten years to compile an image. Anyone mess around with anything like this? I'm going through the SARA group mail archives and just being all  in the most nerdy way possible.
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Nov 6, 2014 03:43
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That's how it starts. It's only a matter of time before you start wearing a tinfoil hat to keep the alien signals out of your brain and start collecting your own pee in mason jars.
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Nov 6, 2014 03:52
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I finally got my telescope out to grab a random shot of the moon last weekend. Very happy with how it turned out, though it's not quite as crisp as I wanted it to be - possibly because I forgot to take the strap off the camera and it was windy out. D'oh. This was with my Canon T3i strapped straight to the 2" eyepiece adapter, that was the only way to make the focal length short enough to actually focus the shot. Now my question is, what's the best way to combine this with camera/telescope lenses to increase the magnification?
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Nov 6, 2014 13:41
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Venusian Weasel posted:Aside from the missed focus, it looks really good. Colors seem accurate for the most part (maybe a touch too red) and you've done a fine job capturing some of the fainter nebulosity. Don't be so down on yourself. Thanks. It's just little things (like the focus for instance) which made me go  Definitely discovered that it is easy to go overboard with processing the images. The image was overwhelmingly blue, and I knew M42 had a red cast in pictures (and greenish by eye), so I set about tweaking. That quickly devolved into monstrosities. Had more than my share of ctrl-z and new previews to play inside I also just realized that my mount has a polar scope built in ( again), so next time alignment should be a lot more accurate and I'm going to try longer subs.
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Nov 6, 2014 19:31
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Hey folks, I'm getting some cool space posters printed for my brother as a gift. Specifically, loving huge cool space posters (180 x 60cm): (the original is 10630x3543 res) I think I'm going to get it printed on a quality matt paper as it just won't show up on a glossy. But realistically I need to brighten it up as well. The problem with this is obviously that (a)it can start to look washed-out and (b)increasing brightness/constrast/saturation increased the noise/film grain dramatically. I have very little experience editing night photos like this and everything I try seems to make it worse, even after doing various de-noising things. Does anyone have any tips for image adjustment? e: for reference this is what the (ridiculously helpful) dudes at posterjack came up with, the grain/noise just pops when you up the brightness etc.: 
El Grillo fucked around with this message at 23:00 on Nov 6, 2014 |
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Nov 6, 2014 22:47
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why not just increase highlights and white levels? even if you need to use masks.
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Nov 6, 2014 23:05
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El Grillo posted:Hey folks, I'm getting some cool space posters printed for my brother as a gift. Specifically, loving huge cool space posters (180 x 60cm): The dynamic range of printed paper is a lot less than your computer screen. The best thing to do is to try some print tests.
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Nov 9, 2014 19:44
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autism chariot posted:It's only a matter of time before you start wearing a tinfoil hat to keep the alien signals out of your brain
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Nov 10, 2014 00:29
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So astro-goons, what are the thoughts of the Meade LX-90 series? 12" ACF in particular? I can score one locally that has literally been out of the box once and the owner is trying to dump. I can probably get it for over $1K off retail (plus also taxes of course). I do have an 8" (or is it 10"?) Chinese dob but I virtually never use it. The length of tube makes it a PITA to transport. The mount pretty much rules out astrophotography too which really appeals to me, so I must admit I'm thinking of it. The computerized mount seems decent too from what I've read. Thoughts?
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Nov 10, 2014 22:43
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I've got an 8" version of those I got secondhand about 10 years ago, from an astrophotographer that had it for a couple years. The optics are pretty good on it (no noticeable defects) and the computer system was fine, if a little clunky. Worked fine until the screen popped a capacitor a couple years ago - the motorized controls still work, but I can't see the settings anymore. It's a solid scope, and if you can get a nearly new one well under retail I'd definitely go for it.
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Nov 10, 2014 23:02
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Thanks! Since you have one, is the stock mount good enough for astrophotography or do you need to buy a "wedge" mount that I've also seen for them? Am I shooting myself in the foot considering a 12" mirror? I'm wondering how much of a chore it will be taking it out.
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Nov 11, 2014 01:12
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slidebite posted:Thanks! I'm not sure, I never got around to using mine for deep space astrophotography. Seems like it worked for the guy I got it from, though. I'd assume the 12" model will be fairly heavy (~40 lbs) though. I can carry my 8" around easily enough but I prefer to haul it out onto my driveway with a garden wagon before setting it up.
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Nov 11, 2014 01:23
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slidebite posted:Thanks! If you're doing anything other than shooting the moon you're going to want the wedge, that way it can function as an equatorial. Otherwise the alt-az movements will gently caress up your long exposures.
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Nov 11, 2014 04:05
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Thanks. Still on the fence, it's a borderline impulse purchase but as 12" for <$2K Canadian is pretty tempting. 
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Nov 11, 2014 22:19
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I haven't yet decided on on the scope, but by complete coincidence someone else just put an LX200 12" in mint shape for $200 less asking price than the LX90. I assume that's the no brainer way to go?
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Nov 14, 2014 19:49
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So I just bought this, and I figured you nerds would want to know it exists too. http://teespring.com/moneytelescope You're welcome.
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Nov 15, 2014 17:32
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AstroZamboni posted:So I just bought this, and I figured you nerds would want to know it exists too. Finally, a shirt that perfectly encapsulates my financial philosophy. Bought it immediately.
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Nov 16, 2014 04:46
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It also comes in a hoodie version for those cold nights at the eyepiece. I'm considering buying that one too.
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Nov 16, 2014 07:30
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I just ordered a new telescope, I'm pretty psyched. I currently have a Celestron NexStar 114GT and while it's cool and I can see poo poo with it, it's definitely got some shortcomings. Celestron lists this as a 1000mm focal length scope, but the one that I got has a sticker claiming 500mm focal length. I believe for a while celestron was including a 2x barlow built in, which would get you up to that 1000mm figure. I bought mine from Best Buy and it does not have one built in. It makes for some pretty poor viewing. I imagine with the built in barlow it would still be sub-par. The mount it's on is also very wobbly and flimsy, and the focuser is also notchy and crappy, even after tweaking it with some bike grease. I ordered a Celestron NexStar 4SE and while it's a slightly smaller aperture the focal length is more than double. The mount it comes with is also much better, it's more sturdy and has a wedge function for using it as an equatorial for longer exposure photos. It's also got a dedicated rear thread for putting my DSLR with T adapter in the back. I'm not going to get mind-blowing stuff with this by any means but it looks like (on paper anyway) that it's going to be much better than my current scope and it will probably see more use because I'll be seeing stuff better. Since it uses 1.25" eyepieces all of the eyepieces I already have should work fine, and it uses the same Celestron hand control software so I already know the quirks of using it. Hoping the wife also gets me a Celestron NexImage 5 solar system imager for Christmas. GutBomb fucked around with this message at 20:56 on Nov 17, 2014 |
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Nov 17, 2014 20:52
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Thought maybe this would be good to share for smart phone picture taking. http://eyesonthesky.com/DIYImprovements/5cameraphonebracket.aspx https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQwRnwwNQTA My attempts to use webcams in my scope haven't worked too well, so maybe I'll try something like this to put my phone on my mount.
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Nov 19, 2014 12:27
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oh god what have we done I blame slidebite for making me look at Kijiji. Got it from a dude who's moving to a really light polluted place in the states. I don't think it was a killer deal ($1.9k Canadian with an eyepiece and filter kit, a DSLR adapter and one of those webcam dealies for planetary photography), but the cheapest I've ever seen in our city, and I doubt something like this will come again any time soon. The guy who checked it before us brought his wife, who very much disapproved of its size. My partner there teaches physics and astronomy, however, so absolutely nothing to worry about. God, I love her. Can't wait to surprise her extracurricular astronomy club with it the next time we head out.
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Nov 21, 2014 05:48
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Great score! Is that the 8 or the 9.25? The length of the scope makes it look like it might be the latter.
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Nov 21, 2014 12:04
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Hah, it's actually the 11" version. It's a beast to carry, but not unmanageably so, especially once I start going back to the gym. Definitely going to consider building a cart for it, though.
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Nov 21, 2014 15:00
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