Stars / Astronomy / Astrophotography / Telescopes / Astro

Fun to see how the moon's orientation changes from your POV to mine.

Maybe invest in a tracking mount before a telescope? You can go from cheap star trackers to velocio levels of spend.

The best moon shots seem to be from stacked video clips.

velocio levels of spend.

lols

I can recommend a skyguider pro, you should be able to find one second hand easily and if you want you can hook it up to a guide scope to guide in RA. I got a Williams Z73 with a D850 off the back of it guiding to a decent degree of accuracy.

https://chng.it/fjNFb5TNQ6

Bump for Herstmonceux Observatory, this thread never ceases to be awesome..

thank you

@Grumpy_Git
@benjam

Thanks for the advice.

Magma
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2n0jgldn5o

Very low tech here (10mm lens on a static tripod) but a gap in the clouds on Mull tonight revealed how little light pollution there is in these parts.

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In Normandy, giving the Star Adventurer pro a quick go.

Lots of trial and error, finding it difficult to get stars in focus.
Manage to get a decent image of Andromeda next to the Milky Way.

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Love that!

What amazes me is that almost everything we see in the night sky is from the milky way other than about 7 or 8 objects (large galaxies). And those stars we can see in the milky-way are part of our local group. Only in very recent times have we're realised that there's anything actually beyond our own galaxy. The total number of stars that can be seen with the naked eye is only 9,095, according to the Bright Star Catalogue...

Only in very recent times have we're realised that there's anything actually beyond our own galaxy.

We're coming up to the 100th anniversary actually, 30th December 2024.

Was on Brownsea Island camping at the weeked, so tried for the first time to take some photos of the milky way. Here are some examples. I'm not great at editing, using Affiinity Pro, but don't really know how to use it yet! I was trying to get interesting things in the foreground, but should really take 2 exposures with diferent focus and knit them together. These are all single exposures.

Edit: All taken with Nikon D500 with 10-20mm lens at 10 mm. Aperture of 4.5f, 30 seconds exposure, ISO 1600. Used a timer set at 5 secs to limit shake.

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more

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3rd

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last one, promise. I'm actually in this one, just about see the beam of a head torch.

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Lovely!

Could people share camera settings with pictures please? Always interested.

I've edited my first post above with settings

Thank you! In Devon in a few weeks so hoping for some similarly clear skies.

Play around with the settings, try some with longer/shorter exposures and make sure you manual focus first on infinity (at the moon or a really bright star).

This was my first time at trying this, so I am by no means an expert!

So, I've got a new toy.

Took a punt on a used Meade Polaris 130 Newtonian telescope on a Celestron Nexstar mount. Came with 3 plossl eye pieces, a Barlow lens and a AC power unit, all for under £90.

Everything seems to be working, so very happy with the purchase so far. Just waiting for some batteries to arrive for the red dot scope and clear skies.

I'm aware of the old buy cheap, buy twice adage, but this was "cheap" enough to take the risk.

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that is a nice buy, and it looks like it will do a phenomenal job

Yeah hopefully. Didn't even know about the plossls until i picked it, up as it saves me forking out for upgrades for the moment!

Edit: the batteries have turned up and even the redlight scope works. Role on tonight and see if I can get the alignment set up for the Goto mount.

Got it set up in the garden, took me a while to get it StarAligned and...the clouds suddenly rolled in.

Looks like cloud for the next 5 nights at least.

Bum.