The Orion Nebula

This will be my last attempt at The Orion Nebula with my Sony F-828, this is as good as it is going to get, still a cool shot but the camera is just old technology, please stay tuned for when the new camera arrives.

Pleiades Alcyone

This is a close up looking into Pleiades larger star called Alcyone. These are considered new stars and they still have their cocoons around them, I need a better camera to capture them so please stay tuned.

Betelgeuse

Betelgeuse is a red super giant and is around 640 light years from us, some astronomers think it has already gone super nova so keep looking up at the constellation Orion and one day maybe sooner than later you will notice an amazing colorful nebula in the sky, what a site that would be. The dot above the star is a lens flare but the other one on lower right is BG's companion star

Rigel

Rigel is the brightest star in the constellation Orion and is the sixth brightest star in our night sky, it is estimated to be around 700-900 light years away.

Third Quarter Crescent Moon Close Up

This is a crop of the previous image

Third Quarter Crescent Moon

This is a Mosaic of 12 exposures taken close up using a 2x Barlow and a 40mm Plossl composited in PhotoShop CS4. Each exposure was taken using a Medium Density filter at ISO 64 and .25 sec for each. Notice how the Alpine mountains on the top seem to reach out into space, this is because of there height and light from the sun can still reach them at the top of their peaks.

The Apennine and Caucasus Range Wide View

This is a mosaic of 14 close-up shots using a 2" 2x Barlow and a 1.25 2x Barlow combined attached to a 40mm Plossl with my Sony F-828 attached to all of that inserted to a 2" Star Diagonal in the visual back of my CGEM-800 scope

The Apennine Range Close-up in B&W

The Apennine and Caucausus Mountains

The highest peak in these mountains is 6km high making them higher than any mountain found on earth from the base up. Mountains on the moon are not measured from sea level like they are here on Earth

The Moons Straight Wall

This is a mosaic of 7 close-up shots with the inset. The Straight Wall also known as the Rail Road is around 700ft tall and 65 miles long, it is a tectonic plate shift from millions of years ago when the moon still had and active core.

Moon Mosaic Slice

This is a close-up of one of my mosaic composites 12 shots in total .25 seconds exposure at ISO 64 for each each.

Waxing Gibbous Moon Mosaic

This is a mosaic of 12 shots composited in PhotoShop

Waxing Gibbous Moon

This is a mosaic of 12 close-up shots composited in PhotoShop. This was my first time using this method, I was thrilled with the clarity that this method gets in the final image.

The Orion Nebula

This shot could have been more clear but my scope alignment was not the best there for I was getting drift. The exposure was only 30 seconds and unguided.

Starplane

Plane passing the Stars

Jupiter and Clouds

The white dot is Jupiter, I was out with the camera one night and I wanted to see what the clouds would look like exposed for 20 seconds set against the backdrop of the stars. The color is false because I enhanced it in PhotoShop

Yellow Cresent Moon

This was taken right after sundown with my camera, 200mm zoom and 7x digital zoom. This is a waning Cresent Moon

Jupiter and 4 of it's 64 moons

Jupiter looks fuzzy like a tennis ball this is due to camera noise, the best way to get a clear shot is with a CCD imager or with a simple webcam. More of Jupiter to come when the webcam gets delivered.

Venus and Mercury 200mm Zoom

Once in a Blue Moon

False color taken with a blue filter

Fun with PhotoShop

Venus and Mercury

This shot was taken from my front yard in early summer 2010

Orion Nebula Wide Field

There is much more of the nebula to be seen than what is in this photo but I am limited to what the camera can do.

The Orion Nebula

This was one of the first shots I took of the Orion Nebula, this is pushing my camera to its limits but at the same time I was still thrilled with the shot. The nebula is around 1700 light years from us and is one of the most photographed Nebula's in our Galaxy  

Venus and the Moon

I took this shot from the end of my driveway

Stars of the Eagle Nebula

My hope was to get a shot of the Nebula but the camera will just not do it, no fault to the camera, it was not designed for astrophotography. The inset shows what the Nebula really looks like. If you are familiar with images from the Hubble you will recognise this as THE PILLARS OF CREATION

Venus and Moon Earthshine

The Earthshine on this shot is pretty clear but now looking at the shot I am wondering if that is Mercury on the right.

The Moon and Venus

I took this shot just with my Sony F-828 camera at the end of my driveway, it is a composite of two shots for different exposures and then composited in PhotoShop.

New Draconious

Located in the constellation Draco and is 360 light years from us.

Porrima

Located in the constellation Virgo and a Goddess of prophecy in Roman mythology. This is a binary system and the stars orbit each other every 169 years and are 38 light years from us. The stars average a distance between each other like that of the Sun to Pluto

Rasalgethi close up

Located in the constellation Hercules, in Arabic Head of the Kneeler. This star is known as a Red Giant and has a companion star that orbits every 3600 years, the second star is a White Dwarf. They are around 382 light years from us.

The Ring Cluster

The Ring Nebula M57

Located in the constellation of Lyra the Ring Nebula is a prominent example of a Planetary Nebula, this type of nebula is formed when a single star can no longer keep it's mass together and for simple explanation, it explodes. What is left behind is the debris particles and in the center is a White Dwarf Star the White Dwarf, still giving of lots of light allows us to see the Debris Ring. The nebula is located about 2300 light years from Earth This is not a great shot of the nebula and it's true colors are missing. More of this guy to come in the future with a better camera.

Saturn

Saturn is one of the most photographed planets in our solar system and this is primarily because of it's wondrous rings. The rings are mostly made up of ice and rock. Right now after completing a 7 year mission to Saturn the Cassini space craft is in orbit and has to date sent back some of the most amazing images of Saturn ever taken. You can see all of them on the NASA site through the GREAT LINKS section on this blog.

Polaris

This is just a camera shot of Polaris. All us astronomers are very thankful for this star because our north pole is almost perfectly aligned to it and it allows us to align our scopes to the pole. because of being able to align to the pole we are able to track our scopes on the stars compensating for the rotation of the Earth. Polaris is the only star in the northern hemisphere that does not appear to move across the sky like all the others, in fact from earth it appears as the all the stars revolve around it. Early astronomers must have thought it was the center of the universe. Polaris is 430 light years from Earth and has two companion stars that appear to rotate around it every 24 hours, this is not the case because it is Earth that is rotating. Polaris is the one in the center on the image

Backyard Star View

This is the view from my backyard of the night sky in August around midnight or possibly later looking NE

Super Man

I was out one night taking wide angle images of the stars on long exposure and a southwest jet entered the frame, in PhotoShop I doubled the image keeping the plane in color and then turning the BG to B&W

Venus

This shot was taken just with my camera I had the zoom lens at 200mm and then the digital zoom at 7x, it is not the greatest shot but not bad for my old Sony F-828

Venus and Mercury

This was taken just with my camera at the end of my driveway, Mercury is not the red one on the left but the lighter blueish one on the right. The red star on the left is only red because of the camera settings so the color is false

Venus and the Moon

I took this shot with my camera out on my driveway, the Moon is over exposed but it shows of the Earthshine. Earthshine is the reflected light coming from the earth hitting the dark side of the Moon.

Zeta Lyrae 2 Full Shot

This is the full shot of Zeta Lyrae showing all 7 stars in the group, 152 light years away. Lyra is Latin for Harp

Zeta Lyrae (Harp)

This is a small cluster of 7 stars in this shot it is focused on two, they are about 152 light years from us.

Alien Invasion

I was out getting shots of the Moon and Venus one night with my Camera, I knew the street lamp was in the shot but I figured I would cut it out latter. After looking at it later, it reminded my of one of those old Sci-Fi's from the 60's.

M45, Moon and Venus

I was trying to get the Earthshine on the moon and had no idea M45 was even there because I could not see it with the naked eye but a bit of camera exposure made it show up.

Moon, Venus and Mercury

This Photo was taken just with my camera from the end of my driveway

Perceid Meteor

During the Perseid Meteor Shower in August I spent 2 hours outside with my camera taking shot after shot to get a photo of a meteor, I discovered the trick is to stop moving the camera to were you think they will be seen next, leave the camera in one place looking into Perceious and you will get one. It does not look like much but it is a meteor, Although I did not get images of the cool ones I did see all in all it was a good night out.

Daytime Waning Cresent Moon

For some reason getting the moon in focus is a challenge during the day, it may be I need to use a different filter, I will try some other solutions next time.

Epsilon Lyrae

This is also known as The Double Double star system it is a quadruple system approximately 162 light years from us in the constellation Lyra (Harp)

Delta Cephei

Delta Cephei is a binary star system and is 891 light years away in the constellation Cepheus (The King) it can be seen in the same region as Polaris