First photo of the Andromeda Galaxy

Last night had a clear sky, although the moon was up, which kind of spoiled it a bit for what I was trying to do... get my first photo of a galaxy!

Anyway, this was still good practice, mainly to show that I could actually point the camera at the right bit of the sky, even though the object I was trying to capture wasn't visible to the naked eye! Here's the photo I got... the object in the centre is the Andromeda Galaxy, or M31 as it is also known (click for a larger image):

Nothing overly impressive, mainly due to the effects of the moon, but I was pleased to capture it nonetheless. Next time I need to try it zoomed in a bit, and on a moonless night, and see what I can get...

I also got another picture of some stars, though again the moonlight spoiled it a bit (click for a larger image):

As usual, my setup was pretty simple:
- Nikon D60 SLR, used at ISO1600
- Sigma lens at 18mm and f2.8
- EQ1 telescope mount with basic motor drive

Mike

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Deep sky astrophotography

Enthused by my recent visit to an open evening at Herstmonceux Observatory, yesterday I made an attachment to fix my SLR camera onto a telescope mount, and tried getting a few pics of part of the Milky Way. I pretty much just aligned the mount and point the camera up into the sky, not at anything specific, so I'm pretty pleased with the results! I've produced two versions of the image I got, the first is adjusted to highlight the brighter stars (click it to view full size in Flickr):

and this one which brings out the dimmer stars, getting some of the 'cloudy' appearance of the Milky Way:

For those interested in the technical info:

• EQ1 telescope mount, polar aligned and with a very basic RA motor drive
• Nikon D60 with a Sigma lens, at 18mm and F2.8
• Five 30-second exposures at ISO1600 (I took seven, but two had a plan on them!)
• DeepSkyStacker software used to process the images, using flat, dark and bias frames.

I'll be trying some different shots over the coming weeks, when time and weather permit...

Mike

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Herstmonceux Observatory open evening

Last night we went over to a Herstmoncuex Observatory open evening. If you're even just remotely interested in astronomy or space, this is well worth a visit. All the usual hands-on science displays and exhibits are open - these are great for kids, but I quite enjoy them myself too.

Of course, they do look a bit weird lit in red lights! This is necessary to avoid ruining your night vision, which you'll be needing when it comes to looking through telescopes...

Outdoors, the courtyard is also lit in red, though you may still want to bring a torch - red ones preferred, of course!

The real treat is looking through the big telescopes. Some of these are up to 150 years old, but have been restored to working order and are still much, much bigger than anything you could have at home in your garden!

They used to be part of the Royal Greenwich Observatory, and were moved to Herstmonceux when the the light pollution got too bad in London. Of course, the same happened here due to Eastbourne, and the RGO is on an island overseas somewhere now.

As well as these, out in the courtyard are lots of telescopes of varying designs and sizes, provided by the local astronomy club and its members. These are all pointing at various interesting points in the sky, and available for visitors to look through:

I tried taking a few photos of the sky with my camera, and got this one of Cassiopeia:

The Milky Way is running vertically through the centre of this one, though you'll probably have to take my word for it!

It all takes me back to before we had the woodland, when I had time to do my own astrophotography in the back garden - here's a few of my best pictures...

Orion Nebula:

Saturn:

Jupiter:

The Moon:

Maybe I'll get back into this one day, but it'll probably have to wait till I retire!

Mike

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Big telescope for sale

I'm reluctantly selling my Sky-Watcher Explorer 200 telescope, and thought I should post it on my blog before putting it on ebay, in case anyone I know is interested - I'd like to see it go to a good home. I'm selling it due to a lack of time to use it (something to do with managing a woodland...) and a lack of space to store it at home. Here's some of the pics I've taken with it, with the assistance of the free Registax software for combining multiple images:

The telescope is on an EQ-5 mount with an RA motor drive (essential to keep the telescope tracking where you point it as the earth rotates). To buy the telescope and mount new today would cost about £430, and the motor drive is separate at about £70, so that's £500 in total. I'm open to reasonable offers, so email me if you're interested.

Here's all the details:

• Magnifications (with eyepieces supplied): x40, x100
• Maximum practical magnification potential: x400
• Diameter of primary mirror: 200mm
• Telescope focal length: 1000mm (f/5)
• Eyepieces supplied (1.25"): 10mm & 25mm
• Dual-fit 1.25"/2" focuser, which can also take T-ring adaptor for SLR cameras
• 0.5mm secondary mirror supports
• 9x50 Finderscope
• Direct SLR camera connection
• Camera mount on top of the telescope mount
• EQ5 deluxe heavy-duty equatorial mount, with RA motor drive installed
• Built-in polar alignment scope holder
• Stainless steel tripod with accessory tray
• RA motor drive controller and battery pack, with adaptors to allow you to use AA batteries with it (batteries not included)
• Instruction manuals for telescope and RA motor drive
• All in good working order, with a few scratches on the outside of the tube - these are only cosmetic, caused when rotating the telescope in the mount while in use.

And here's some pictures of the kit - hover over them for info, and click for larger versions:

It can't really be posted, so must be collected, though I can deliver it for a suitable fee for fuel use, and would be happy to give a lesson in setting it up and using it. Do post comments if you have questions, or email me directly if you are interested in buying it. It'll be going on ebay in a couple of days...

I also have some other eyepieces for higher magnification (200x and 250x), but I'm selling these separately as they're about £35 each when new.

Mike

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Astrophotography - the Moon and Jupiter

For the first time in months I got the big telescope out in the back garden and took some pictures, of the Moon and Jupiter. Here's a colour one of the moon:

I did a couple in black & white as well:

They were all taken by connecting the SLR camera directly to the telescope, with no lens in between. The telescope is a Skywatcher newtonian reflector, 200mm diameter and 1000mm focal length. That means it's like connecting a 1000mm F5 lens to the SLR! I actually took about 10 photos and stacked them using Registax to get a sharper image.

I took some more pictures by recording video using my Panasonic FZ8 compact - this is used with an eyepiece in the telescope, allowing you to try different magnifications, but it's a lot harder to focus. The video is again processed using Registax. Here's a close-up of some craters on the moon:

A couple of Jupiter, using different settings in Registax:

and another of Jupiter at a higher magnification, but a bit blurry - the "seeing" wasn't that great, the view was shimmering a lot due to turbulence in the atmosphere:

Anyway, very pleased to get these pics of Jupiter, they're my first. Hope to get some more another time. Finally, here's the SLR camera next to the telescope tube, just for scale:

Mike

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This week in the woods

I've not taken enough photos for daily posts this week, so here's a round-up of the activity in the woods. We had our friend Jim come and help us drink tea:

Actually, he worked really hard, setting up and pulling ropes, splitting logs and feeding the fire! Thanks Jim, much appreciated!

Here's the rope-pulling in action:

Here's the gap left after we were done:

If you're wondering why I've left a log propped up in a strange place, it's because it's got a lot of dead wood in it, and I thought it would be nice to leave it kind of standing:

Meanwhile Tracy was busy having a 'felling frenzy', knocking over 10 trees in under two hours:

I did some more work at the same spot later in the week, slowly advancing up us the hill:

On Friday I dealt with some edge trees. We had a fairly large Sweet Chestnut stool and wanted to leave the three largest stems on it to grow on to become larger, and also an Ash with three stems that we wanted to 'single' so it could grow on as well. Here's the result:

As you can see, the base of the Ash below where I removed the other two stems is pretty chunky:

and here's the big Chestnut stool:

I'm particularly keen on the stems on it as they're starting to develop the grooves in their bark which is so rare in our wood, as there's no mature Chestnut:

The logs are certainly piling up now, ready for future home heating:

It's still been a chilly week, though it warmed up a bit on Friday. No snow, but plenty of misty mornings:

The Pheasants are out in force in the woods now. I know a lot just live around the woods, but I wonder if some are released for a shoot in the area, and end up in our wood.

This one managed to land in our dead hedge, only to find that twigs weren't really strong enough for him to stay there:

And of course the Robins have got accustomed to us working again, and follow us around looking for bugs we might have disturbed:

If I can find some time on a brighter day, I hope to get some better bird photos at our feeder. I've been experimenting with attaching my cameras to the smaller of my two telescopes. I've used them with the big telescope before for astrophotography, getting pictures like these of Saturn, the Moon and the Orion Nebula:

However, that telescope is a bit big to take to the woods, so I finally got around to seeing how well the cameras worked with the small telescope, which could be taken to the woods. The SLR can only be fitted to the telescope in prime focus mode, which basically means no lens on the camera and no eyepiece in the telescope, and the results were a bit disappointing, as you can see in this picture of a starling, admittedly taken at about 50m:

This is probably because the level of magnification is just way too high, resulting in a washed-out image. Might be worth a go in better light though...

Anyway, the other method is afocal, which means you have an eyepiece in the telescope and use an adaptor to clamp the camera onto the eyepiece. This won't work with the SLR, and it'd probably be too heavy, so it's only for the compact. However, because there's an eyepiece, the magnification can be much lower, so I got some better pictures. A Collared Dove at 50m:

and a Sparrow at 15m:

I still need to play around with the settings some more, but if I can find the time on a sunny day, I might get some good pics, especially going into the Spring.

Mike

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