The Astronomy hobby thread

[Eric Hahl]

Thank you Steve.

[Pazuzu]

Originally Posted by flatbutt

It's the background details of the lives and discoveries of all the great ones including a lot of tech detail. I was fascinated by the political aspects of astronomy in the early days as well as the development of reflectors vs refractors.

"First Light" by Dan Preston
"The Perfect Machine" by Ronald Florence
"The last Stargazers" by Emily Levesque

All non-fiction stories about astronomy, astronomers and telescopes. Telescopes have as many stories, myths, histories, lies, etc as any famous building or monument.

[Eric Hahl]

Shot the eagle nebula Tuesday evening. 5.3 hours of exposure with 60 second sub exposure’s.

[flatbutt]

Northern tier Pelis ...look up

https://www.spaceweather.gov/communities/aurora-dashboard-experimental

you may get a view tonight

[Eric Hahl]

Gonna head east tomorrow night and find some dark skies to setup in. Hopefully find some bottle 1.

[masraum]

Aurora are on my bucket list, but without there being a VERY unusual solar event where (forgive the pun) the stars align just right, I'm pretty unlikely to see them without traveling north. I remember there was an event when my dad was still alive where they thought that they might be visible very far south, but I think that's extremely unusual.

[Eric Hahl]

Aurora would be fun to see and photograph. I was in Alaska for 10 days years ago and nadda. Bummer.
Got out again last night and got m27. 2.5 hours worth.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by Eric Hahl

Aurora would be fun to see and photograph. I was in Alaska for 10 days years ago and nadda. Bummer.
Got out again last night and got m27. 2.5 hours worth.

Great shot!

The missus and I are NOT cruise people, but we have talked about going on a Norwegian fjord and aurora cruise. The fear is that you could book one of those, and pay a ton and not see squat. We would at least see Norwegian fjords, but it would be a major disappointment to not see any aurora.

[Eric Hahl]

But you do get see awesome sites and spend time with your love!

[flatbutt]

Originally Posted by masraum

Great shot!

The missus and I are NOT cruise people, but we have talked about going on a Norwegian fjord and aurora cruise. The fear is that you could book one of those, and pay a ton and not see squat. We would at least see Norwegian fjords, but it would be a major disappointment to not see any aurora.

Originally Posted by Eric Hahl

But you do get see awesome sites and spend time with your love!

and someone else does all the cooking and cleaning!

[Eric Hahl]

A few shots from my trip to the Oregon desert.

[Scott Douglas]

Awesome shots Eric.
Thanks for sharing a look at your set up too.

[Eric Hahl]

Thanks Scott!

[flatbutt]

Musk just launched more Starlink sats

[flatbutt]

FWIW this is a link to Dylan O'Conell's imaging channel

https://www.youtube.com/erfmufn

[masraum]

Originally Posted by Eric Hahl

A few shots from my trip to the Oregon desert.

Wow, really spectacular!

[Eric Hahl]

Thanks Steve.

[Scott Douglas]

Eric, I'm used to 'photographic' speak in terms of focal length of lenses.
What is your scope equivalent too, in 35mm camera terms?
We have too much light pollution to even consider doing something like this, but I just remembered I did take some shots of the moon last night just for grins since it was out as I was watering the front yard.
Thanks for reminding me! I need to download the pics.........

edit: Well that was a miserable fail on my part.

[Eric Hahl]

Originally Posted by Scott Douglas

Eric, I'm used to 'photographic' speak in terms of focal length of lenses.
What is your scope equivalent too, in 35mm camera terms?
We have too much light pollution to even consider doing something like this, but I just remembered I did take some shots of the moon last night just for grins since it was out as I was watering the front yard.
Thanks for reminding me! I need to download the pics.........

edit: Well that was a miserable fail on my part.

The last series of shots posted are from two setups.
The "wide" milky way shots were just full frame DSLR with 50mm on a tripod for 10 seconds.

The close up shots are with a William Optics FLT-120 refractor (780mm focal length @f6.5)

Keep in mind they make light pollution filters to deal with city skies. In fact, every shot I've posted has this filter in place.

I also have a wider field scope that is 350mm focal length @ f4.9

[masraum]

Originally Posted by Scott Douglas

Eric, I'm used to 'photographic' speak in terms of focal length of lenses.
What is your scope equivalent too, in 35mm camera terms?
We have too much light pollution to even consider doing something like this, but I just remembered I did take some shots of the moon last night just for grins since it was out as I was watering the front yard.
Thanks for reminding me! I need to download the pics.........

edit: Well that was a miserable fail on my part.

The moon is the easiest celestial subject since it's essentially like shooting in daylight. You can shoot the moon with a good camera, long lens, and tripod. You just have to keep the shutter speed down.

You can perform AP in high light pollution areas, but obviously, that is more difficult and doesn't get the same sort of results as AP in dark skies. You can even do really basic stuff with a tripod. The longer the lens the worse the results. The best results would be for wide angle. Longer lenses on a static tripod (no tracking) produce very primitive results.

I shot these MANY years ago (2006, I think) on a tripod on an old 8megapixel Canon EOS with a longish (200mm or maybe 300mm) lens in a fairly light polluted suburb of Houston (also 50' from a streetlight). It was just an exercise in curiosity. I haven't tried again since I'm out in the sticks in a "bortle 4" area now. I suspect the results would be very different, but without tracking, they are never going to be good. On top of the limits of the photography and environment, a huge portion of AP is the post processing, at least, it was back when I shot these.

Moon & Pleiades


Orion nebula. I have, somewhere, a much better shot of Orion, but it's still garbage by comparison.


Andromeda galaxy