I do astrophotography sometimes

[Blackice615]

Feel free to share more photos!

 

[norfolkgarden]

Looks beautiful!

Had no idea you could get that good a picture without an observatory.

 

[Ron Reefman]

@Ron Reefman enjoy this

You know me well my friend! I love this photo. We have a laminated poster size image of Andromeda hanging in our bedroom!

 

[Ron Reefman]

Beautiful picture! Any recommendations on where to learn about the astronomy hobby? I'd like to get my 6 year old a telescope, he has as interest in space and I want to help it grow. Thanks!

Besides the link Jim offered to Sky & Telescope, try Astronomy Picture of the Day.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

There is a new astronomy related photo there every day as well as a searchable archive of past images. And if you want to learn about astronomy (besides just taking or looking at photos) their explanation for each image has lots of links to other more detailed info. I learned a lot from the site when I was first becoming interested in space.

 

[Ron Reefman]

Jim, do you have any shots of the Milky Way stretched out across the sky?

My wife and I are planning an overnight camping trip to the Dry Tortugas (70 miles west of Key west) on a date when it's warm and there is a new moon (dark sky) in hopes of seeing (and hopefully photographing) the Milky Way.

 

[jd371]

Awesome! I haven't been to Greece since 85' when I was just a lad visiting my grandparents. My grandparents lived in a rural village and one thing I remember is when it was too hot to sleep indoors we would sleep on the balcony under the stars. In my life I have never seen so many stars in the sky like it did then, a blanket of stars across the sky and every night I would see so many shooting stars.

 

[Gatling]

Thats incredible! I still haven't got any photos of Andromeda, its actually slightly too big for my view finder. Ill need to take panned shots and clip them together. I have a Celestron 925 Edge HD with a Canon 6D EOS! Located in Ontario. I am having tracking issues thus my photos aren't as sharp. I can only take 30 second exposers at the moment.

Here's an old photo I found on hand, I have some wide angle pictures too!
I plan on building an observatory or some permanent mount as exposures greater than 30 seconds show imperfections in the tracking

 

[Gatling]

Though my 70-200m lens mounted to the tripod does the wonders!

 

[Ron Reefman]

Though my 70-200m lens mounted to the tripod does the wonders!

You took this with a 200mm lens? Do you know how long an exposure it was? Even a rough guess would be helpful.

I'm using a Nikon P900 bridge/super zoom camera and it doesn't have the kind of manual control that most SLR or DSLR cameras do. But if you are just shooting photos for fun, an easy to carry 2000mm lens sure is handy. And I find it interesting that when the moon is visible during the day and the sky is blue rather than black, if I zoom out to 2000mm I still get a black sky. I have to pull back some to get enough sky in the frame so that it looks like this.

 

[CDavmd]

nice to see all these fellow "astro-reefers" :) I never had any idea how many of you are interested in astrophotography. I've been doing astrophotography way back to the early 90's. Its a great hobby with lots of challenges and frustrations alike :)

Since folks are posting some images, I throw out a couple of mine-

Here's the veil nebula in narrow band one of my favorites:

It was shot through a Takahashi FSQ106 and QSI CCD camera on a Paramount MX.

Heres the rho Ophiuchi region shot with a DSLR/200mm lens on a tracking mount:


and one more- North american nebula in HaRGB using the TAK 106 and QSI CCD:



Cheers everyone- and clear skies as we say!

 

[Sea MunnKey]

;Wideyed . You guys are out of this World!!! Spectacular images and wow ... Thanks for sharing!!! ;)

 

[siggy]

Hey Guys and gals any recommendations on a Telescope for my son...and me:p I have spent coin only to be disappointed

 

[Gatling]

You took this with a 200mm lens? Do you know how long an exposure it was? Even a rough guess would be helpful.

I'm using a Nikon P900 bridge/super zoom camera and it doesn't have the kind of manual control that most SLR or DSLR cameras do. But if you are just shooting photos for fun, an easy to carry 2000mm lens sure is handy. And I find it interesting that when the moon is visible during the day and the sky is blue rather than black, if I zoom out to 2000mm I still get a black sky. I have to pull back some to get enough sky in the frame so that it looks like this.

Yes the wide angle with Orion's belt was with the 70-200mm. I think I had a 2x extender on, can't remember!! But it was roughly 25-30 seconds at not too high ISO. I hooked up the 200mm to my telescope mount which is tracking the sky (German equitorial mount). As well, you need dark night skies. This was at my cottage in mid Ontario.

 

[Ron Reefman]

So Sunday night made for easy shots. Early on the moon is still bright so you get a short exposure and no very little movement from the moon. But it's not red yet either.




Once the eclipse is getting near totality the moon gets much dimmer and exposure times get longer and the moon actually moves enough in just a few seconds to make it a bit less sharp.