Astro Photos

Comet Lunin and Behive Cluster

2009-03-05T21:11:00.000-08:00

Hi All,

Here is Today's conjunction of Lunin and M44.

Clouds spoiled the game and i got just 2 frames of 60sec each, But decided to use those.

Taken using 135mm JCPenny lens @ f/4 @ ISO 800
Canon 400D unmodified, Astronomic CLS, manually guided on EQ-2.

Cropped to central 60%.

Click on image to open

Thanks for looking...

Comet Lunin meets Saturn

2009-02-24T07:31:00.000-08:00

On 23rd Feb 2009, just one day before its closest approach to Earth, Comet Lunin visually passed by near Saturn. Its fun to observe both most attractive celestial objects so close by.

I tried to capture this occasion, though sky was quite cloudy here y'day but I managed to shoot through 20 min open window. Though I did not get enough data to produce attractive image, but enough to show Comet and Saturn together...

Thin layer of cloud gave soft look to starts and Saturn :)

- Canon 75-300mm UMS III zoom @ 75mm F/5.
- Canon XTi - unModified
- Astronomic CLS - EOS Clip Filter
- Tracked on Orion EQ-2 mount
- 5x60sec and 2x30sec @ ISO 800 - captured using DSLR Shutter

Comments and suggestions welcome !!!

Have a Clear Sky
Sameer

Comet Lunin on Feb 21, 2009

2009-02-21T20:32:00.000-08:00

Here is the photo of Comet Lunin !!!

:: Image Details ::
- 11 x 30 sec = 5.5 min total
- Canon XTi with Canon 70-300mm UMS III lens @ 140mm - f/5.6
- Astronomic CLS - EOS Clip Filter
- Tracked on EQ-2 mount

Have a Nice Day
Sameer

Orion Wide Field

2009-02-01T19:55:00.000-08:00

This is my test with tripod mounted Shot

Following Photo combined from 44 X 10sec exposures with Canon Xti, 18-55mm zoom @18mm F3.5.

Vignetting corrected in PS, Combined in registar, Light Pollution corrected in PS and Black Point & Curves adjusted in PS.

Though I did not get any nebulosity in it but overall nice stars in light polluted sky of Woodbridge, NJ, US...

Moon Mosaic on 18 Oct 2008

2008-12-21T10:32:00.001-08:00

4 Pan mosaic of Moon taken with Meade 12" F/10 and Canon 400D DSRL
V1.0

V1.1

New Website Coming Up

2008-11-01T11:49:00.000-07:00

Hi All,

I am building a new website for our (mine and Nilesh Desai's) astrophotos...

Its under development now but will be live very soon

www.indussky.com

Have a Clear Non-Polluted Sky
Sameer

Surviors of Bad Seeing...

2008-05-25T23:54:00.000-07:00

Hi All,

Saturday 24th May once again Nilesh and me tried some photography..

The seeing was very bad from Nilesh's place but we dont have any option !!!

We setup C9.25" + 2x Barlow + Meade DSI Color and took some Jupiter and Moon shots..

though not as good as it can be, We have over processed to bring out details..

Color Image : Stack or 101
B&H Images : Stack of 85

Click on image view to large size

I will upload more images of Moon soon.

Cheers
Sameer

Mars Occultation on May 10

2008-05-17T21:44:00.000-07:00

Hi All,

We have planned observing and photography of Mars Occultation of May 10 from Pune. I reached to Nilesh's place on Friday Night and we did some photography at night.

Next evening we setup Nilesh's 12" Meade on his building terrace for capturing Occultation.

But Bad seeing and extreamly windy conditions spoiled the show. The Mars was dancing in Camera Field even in exposures as short as .0020 sec. !!!!

The output of cource is not what one should expect... its very bad indeed....

We also captured some other objects...

But I did not get enough time to process images after i come back from Pune... I will post images of Mars and Moon soon....

The seeing was too bad it was like looking at object at the bottom of swiming pool... Both images are stack of around 200 images @ 0.0024 sec and Over processed in Registack....

Saturn

with Meade 12" SCT + 2x Meade Barlow + Meade DSI Color Camera + Sameer

Jupiter

with Celestron 9.25" SCT + 2x Meade Barlow + Meade DSI Color Camera... + Sameer

M4

Celestron 9.25 + Lumicon .6x Reducer + SBIG ST7 + Nilesh

M5

Celestron 9.25 + Lumicon .6x Reducer + SBIG ST7 + Nilesh

M51 - Wirlpool Galaxy

Celestron 9.25 + Lumicon .6x Reducer + HX9 + Nilesh

M64 - Black Eye Galaxy

Celestron 9.25 + Lumicon .6x Reducer + HX9 + Nilesh

M104 - Sombrero Hat Galaxy

Celestron 9.25 + Lumicon .6x Reducer + HX9 + Nilesh

M5

with AstroTech 66mm Refractor + Meade DSI Color Camera + Sameer

M104

with AstroTech 66mm Refractor + Meade DSI Color Camera + Sameer

MilkyWay from Vangani - May 3 2008

2008-05-07T05:06:00.000-07:00

Following are the pics of Milkyway taken from Vangani by Anurag.I and Amar Sharma also tried our hands at Barn Door mount.

We used Barn Door mount made by Anurag and used his Canon 400D camera @ 24mm !!!
Exposures are in the range of 1 min and 2 mins.

click on images to see bigger version....

Cheers
Sameer

Victims of Light Pollution....

2008-04-06T21:42:00.000-07:00

Hi All,

On Saturday 5-Apr-08, I and Nilesh we planned for Astrophoto session from my home at Thane. Nilesh come from Pune with his C9.25 and HX9 CCD cam. We were hoping to set it up on LXD75.

But it did not go on it as we did not have dovetail plate for it :(

Anyways we decided to use my AT66 (focal length 400mm) and Mead DSI color for photography. Nilesh fixed RoboFocuser on AT66. That reduced our great efforts for focusing Mead DSI. as those who used any CCD cam knows what a pain to focus it... Using robofocus its just 5min job to get perfect focus !!!

We Started at around 12 and setup was ready to use by 1:00 as we spent some time for visual use too...

Then come the next frustration act searching for targets in light polluted sky and that too in Leo / Virgo sky where there are many galaxies, which we do avoid as being beginner...

And further to push us hard we don't have finder on AT66, as it is very small scope... finding galaxies with small scope was pain ( even M4 was not visible when it was 40 degrees above horizon... Its Glow from Mumbai and Thane....)

After searching fruitless Nilesh advised remove cam and use eyepiece to find targets and then use cam... This worked and we got first target M51.. thoough it was not visible in Scope we know for sure where it is so we set it using eyepiece and then put DSI back. the focusing was not an issue now. and took 30 sec preview :D wow the galaxy was just near the corner. we center it using 15sec expos... and then started actual shot.. we Set Cam at Monochrome Mode as we found the color mode after subtracting dark frame causing some false color.. and set exposure to 30sec...

The best feature of Meade DSI it auto selects the good frames and stacks based on track stars provided to it.. this helps to avoid tracking errors...

We stacked around 45 frames and the result is.....

M51 : Stack of 45x30s

Later we tried following objects but the extream light pollution caused to drop out many frames in Auto Stacking and the resultant were not so good.... I hope i can upload maually processed images some where in this week, as I have all individual images which were taken during auto stacking....

M4

M8 - Lagoon Nebula

M22 - In Color

Do post your comments and suggestions

Cheers
Sameer

Mead DSI-Color - First Night Out

2008-02-16T19:50:00.000-08:00

On Thursday 14th Feb I have received my Mead DSI-Color camera, luckily today that is Saturday the condition of sky was very good, so i planned for photography session.

Mead advertises DSI cameras are very easy to use, but on Windows VISTA there is lot of problems in using camera, I searched all forums and did not find any proper solution.

I spend Friday night and Saturday morning in installing uninstalling Autostar suite and other required software, at last camera started working...

The evening was chilling, temp was -4 -8 Celsius when i started at 7:00PM !

I setup my mount, did casual alignment, and DSI was ready for action. I first targeted brightest object available MOON, but with focal length of 400mm the results were not acceptable, Moon was not sharp enough :( the Magic Eye function of Autostar software did not help much !!!!

Then i turned scope to M42(my test object) and spend some 10min in focusing cam, i realized that the most critical part of any astrophotos is focus!!!

As soon as i got reasonable focus, i took dark frames(It is very important to take dark frames for Deep sky photos, DSI dose have some hot pixels that can't be eliminated without Dark Frames.

Once dark frames are completed i started takings snaps of nebula, I started with 5sec and pushed till 2mins. unfortunately my 1 min and 2mins snaps were not saved due to software problem or may be due to my poor understanding of camera !!!

i got some so so pics with exposure of 5x8, 10x7, 30x5 sec exposures...

I processed those and combined in photoshop, the result is not satisfactory but if i would not have those lost images with exposure of 1 min and 2 min (taken for Luminance) then it would have been excellent image :)

Uff... Astrophotography is cruel, lessons are always learnt hard way !!!

during this session i also notice the LXD 75 mount works great even though the scope aligned causally it tracked objects very well, even 2min exposures were excellent with no trails or jumping in star image... Cool thing [:)]

here is photo of M2 taken with DSI. The result is not great but it is my first attempt with using Meade DSI, and image is not bad; considering heavy lightg pollution of New York...[:)]

Hope very soon i get clear sky !!!
Cheers
Sameer

AstroTech 66 ED in Action

2008-02-12T20:24:00.000-08:00

After wait of almost 20days, at last i got clear sky on 10th Feb. The sky condition was very good but temperature was chilling -15 Celsius !!!

I setup mount and scope and attached My Camera at prime focus. Now my scope is working as 400mm Tele lens...

I roughly aligned mount using polar finder and centered Moon, focused and bingo !!!

Got few nice images of moon....

using Moon as focusing aid, i turned scope to My Favorite M42...
I took series of photos from 5sec to 30sec at 100 ISO and 800 ISO. photos taken at ISO 100 was almost useless due to heavy light pollution, and at 800 ISO sky background turned red !!!

Also the images are soft-focused as focus shifted while adjusting telescope :(

I combined and processed images taken at 800 ISO and achived acceptable image of M42.

here is the result processed and cropped...

Following are the unprocessed crops from original images which are combined in above processed image..

Now weather here for next 15 days is expected to be bad :( and wait for clear night started again...

Cheers
Sameer

The First Light....

2008-01-28T19:59:00.001-08:00

After waiting 5 days for clear sky, at last today i got chance to use my new setup.
also just yesterday i received my Mead LPI camera too.. So its good time to test all things together.

I carried everything to terrace with help of Mandar, and setup mount Mead LXD75 and AstroTech 66ED refractor... and without counter weight !!! even with single counter weight i cant balance scope, it just too light for 10LBs counter weight....

It was dammn chilling... -4 Celsius !!!

The sky was clear but very bright due to glow from NewY ork Manhattan and Jersey City lights.... the Orion Nebula was hardly visible in telescope!!!

I setup mount with polar finder as close as possible to north pole.... and set mount for easy align method... It set Capella first and as soon i set it manually and hit enter on Autostar keypad it moved to next star Dhube... Telescope swelled and in low power field the Dhube was right there...alignment complete !!!

Its time to test GoTo capability, object i asked to set is MARs and goto scope did it right at first time.... mars was just below the center of field... Not BAD at all...

I tried to search Comet Holmes but cant find it due to bright sky, next i setup M45 and used Mead LPI to capture pics but the Field of frame is not enough so i switched to All Time favorite of First Time Astro-Graphers... ORION NEBULA...

I used Mead LPI on 400mm AT66ED...

here is the result of First attempt...stack of 3 pics 5, 8 and 11 sec.... combined using Registax.... As LPI is not meant for deepsky photos i was not expecting something deferent than what i got...

But still its my first Pic on owned setup :)

Cheers
Sameer

The First Pic of this blog

2008-01-19T18:53:00.000-08:00

At last i posted first pic on this blog. It took too long to start...

This photo with My New Camera i recently acquired. The sky condition was very cloudy and this pic taken from barely open window of clouds... Also there was too much wind, even on tripod camera was shaking a lot.

Hoping to get more pics soon...

Cheers
Sameer