TriffiD took a picture

Well, I finally did it. I bought myself a decent telescope. A 10'' Ritchey-Chretien telescope on an NEQ6 mount with a Canon EOS 1100D (astro modified) camera.
Well the skies were absolutely horrible here for the last weeks, but some days ago, I could finally take my very first picture of a deep sky object.
It is a total mess and at -10 °C almost everything went slightly wrong, but it still is my first real astro-photo and you guys are doomed to look at it:

So, this is M33, the so called Triangulum Galaxy. It is about 3 million Lightyears away.
Although I took far too few pics and the exposure-time was too short, you can still see the inner regions of the Galaxy and some dark dust-nebulae. The fashionable pink blots (eg the one on the lower right of the centre) are HII regions of star formation (which would be far better visible if I already knew how to handle that thing).
I took 2 pictures at ISO800, 300 sec and 3 pictures at ISO1600, 420 sec. And added them all up. After that, it took me about 2 hours to get the most information out of it, using different graphics programs, that where made to deal especially with astronomic photographs.

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Finally online: TriffiD's Astronomy Page

Is there a zerg colony in that galaxy?

Nice piccy.

Very Happy

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	Spliffy wrote:
	Is there a zerg colony in that galaxy? Nice piccy.

I don't really know what a zerg is, but thanks. Very Happy

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Finally online: TriffiD's Astronomy Page

Is that ur anus?

Wow, that was bad. Sorry.

I have done some basic digiscoping and it can be such fun.
The problem is that you have to go so far from the city to get any decent pics and of course because I'm usually so lazy.

Good job triff post more if you find something interesting, like an astronaut taking dump reading porn magazine at ISS.

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http://www.cardomain.com/ride/3332770
C4 Corvette, love her till my death.

	Bionic Commando wrote:
	I have done some basic digiscoping and it can be such fun. The problem is that you have to go so far from the city to get any decent pics and of course because I'm usually so lazy.

That is only partially true. Of course there is nothing that beats a really dark sky, but if you can't have that, you can use a CLS-Filter which blocks out the artificial citylights. Works amazingly well. If you have a Canon EOS, you can even buy a Clip-Filter version that you put right in front of the Mirror.
The main problem with astrophotography is the amount of money you have to spend. Nothing is cheap there.

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Finally online: TriffiD's Astronomy Page

Nice Triffid,
Stars Sky is the beautiful thing in the world,
have the luck and I live right on the outskirts of town, where I have a breathtaking view of sky Laughing

You can see how the arm of our galaxy moves through the sky Shocked

make more pictures please.

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nice triff, keep them coming. i got some astrofreaks in my family as well. i've been planning to join in for a night session but never really got round to it yet. also i'm a sissy about siting out in the cold for hours...

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Thanks guys - I will keep you informed on my development by posting the pics I take.
Living on the outskirts is very good, Pothead. My place is pretty good, too, but still: driving from the city for 30 minutes is best. The problem is, I need to power the equipment up, and the batteries needed are - guess what - expensive. So I will keep practising here for some time.
And Blueberry: I can understand, when people don't get the point of going outside in the middle of the night for hours in winter. It is just, that I am so strangely addicted to the moment, my photo appears on screen with all the devices working so neatly together that you get pinpoint stars and can already make out the fine structures of a nebula, cluster or galaxy.
Besides: I think I can soon control the whole thing from inside, with my notebook connected to cameras and mount with a lan-connection to my desktop... Twisted Evil

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Finally online: TriffiD's Astronomy Page

Allright, I am slowly getting into this. Still far from perfect, but much more satisfactory than my last try.

This is M97 - "The Owl-Nebula".
About 7000 years ago and 1500 Lightyears from here that small blueish fellow in the centre of the nebula had burnt up most of his hydrogen and then puffed out his outer layers into space. The star itself was of almost the size of our sun and what you look at here is probably what will happen to our sun 5 billion years from now, when it will die.
Through a telescope this little disc looks like a planet. That's why objects of that kind are called 'Planetary Nebulae'. I think they are utterly beautiful.

This photo is the result of 26 subframes of 7 min. exposure (ISO800) each.

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Finally online: TriffiD's Astronomy Page

I think it's Deathstar using some kind of cloaking device.

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	d3im0s wrote:
	I like arnie's dick

Very nice and educative. You learn something every day.

Wink

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thats not a moon...

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http://www.cardomain.com/ride/3332770
C4 Corvette, love her till my death.

It's a short range fighter.
A fighter that size couldn't get this deep into space on its own.

Luke: "Look at him. He's headed for that small moon."
Han: "I think I can get him before he gets there. He's almost in range."
Obi-Wan: "That's no moon. It's a space station."
Han: "It's too big to be a space station."
Luke: "I have a very bad feeling about this."

lol bio...great minds think alike^^

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	Blueberry wrote:
	yeah, quote me harder, bitch

	TriffiD wrote:
	This photo is the result of 26 subframes of 7 min. exposure (ISO800) each.

was just to ask about the exposure time. so you can't see it like that live?

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Blueberry wrote:

	TriffiD wrote:
	This photo is the result of 26 subframes of 7 min. exposure (ISO800) each.

was just to ask about the exposure time. so you can't see it like that live?

No, if you look at this object through an eyepiece, you actually can see a faint black and white blurry disc. In larger Telescopes (8'' aperture and wider), you might be able to just make out some of the structures of nebulae (maybe the "eyes" of the owl or the centre-star if you are very lucky) or the spiral arms of the galaxies, but you'll never see any colours.
If you use very large Mirrors (16'' to 24'' and larger Dobsonians), you might see quite a lot of details - I never looked through one of those. They are mounted in a special way that makes them actually quite affordable, but you cannot take pictures through those devices.

I am only interested in taking photos, so I got an Astrograph on a German equatorial mount. With its 10'' I can use it to look directly at things and it is fun sometimes (Planets, Moon and, with further equipment, the sun are of course easily visible), but it is not optimized for that. I actually did not yet look at any of the deep sky-objects with my eyepiece. I really should do it. Next time, I promise and I will report.

Well, to answer your question: With the camera in Live-View mode, and the Owl-nebula in the dead centre of the screen, I see... nothing. It is absolutely black. M97 starts to show at 3 maybe 2 minutes exposure time. It is even worse: None of the stars are visible on the screen, also. It appears to be a black frame.

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Finally online: TriffiD's Astronomy Page