Of course, none of this competes with the Hubble Space Telescope, but amateur astrophotography for me is more about the satisfaction of seeing what a particular instrument can do, and learning along the way more about the various objects I’m photographing.Īfter the moon, my next target is Saturn, with the goal of resolving the Cassini division in the rings and Jupiter, where I’ll be happy if I can resolve the Great Red Spot. With the still pictures, I want to get to grips with the various image processing techniques for stacking multiple images. Live images are fed to the laptop screen for easy focus and exposure control. The Canon 7D gives a much nicer image, and can be operated totally remotely via the computer. I also experimented with an old Logitech webcam with the lens removed, but the background noise was too high and the small sensor size made for a very narrow field of view. Webcam attached to telescope Webcam CCDs are very smallĪttaching a digital SLR directly to the telescope gave better results, with the camera’s CCD (Charge Coupled Device) sensor at the prime focus. Not a disaster, but I lost fine detail and the moon took on a weird pinkish bloom. I started by simply holding my smartphone to the eyepiece. Taken holding camera to lens of a spotting (birding) scope.īut to resolve surface detail in objects like Jupiter, a true astronomical telescope is called for. Jupiter with moons, 400mm lens on Canon 7D Jupiter with moons, 400mm lens on Canon 7D Jupiter. I’ve also had some luck in the middle ground using telephoto lenses, where the results have been surprisingly good: like these pics of a lunar eclipse, the International Space Station (ISS), and Jupiter with its moons all taken with a 400mm lens – in the case of the ISS, hand-held: Lunar Eclipse, 400mm lens, Canon 7D ISS with Jupiter through 400mm telephoto and digitally zoomedġ8 megapixels of digital zoom helps resolve the ISS into something other than an unrecognisable blob. Here’s the Plough (Big Dipper) taken with a tripod-mounted standard lens: Plough (Big Dipper) with standard lensĪnd these shots of an Earthlit Moon and Venus are two of my favourites: Strictly speaking, you don’t need a telescope for astrophotography. All I’ve added is a connecting tube and T-mount to get the camera hitched up. The rig is built around an ultra-compact Meade ETX-90 telescope, picked up when I moved to London 10 years ago as a more suitable replacement for my 6 inch reflector. I’m particularly pleased with how the videos came out, capturing the fleeting moments of still air you need to look out for when observing live by eye. This longer clip shows a complete traverse of the moon across the field of view (no tracking): These two are the best of the bunch from the last couple of nights (click for bigger pictures): Moon, ETX-90, Canon 7D eyepiece projection (12.5mm ortho)Īnd in this video clip taken by eyepiece projection, there’s quite a bit of detail visible in the Mare Criseum (Sea-of-Crises) at top left: The moon’s been presenting itself as a nice late evening target in our Westerly outlook this week, so that’s where I’m starting. It’s a good few years since I took a photograph through a telescope, so I thought I’d share my latest pics.
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