Critique Welcomed Some early attempts at astrophotography

Matthew McKendry

Matthew McKendry

Well-Known Member
This past semester my college has started an astronomy club, and it turns out I'm the member with the most photography experience (scary!) In anticipation of using some of the university's equipment, including a 14'' celestron telescope, I decided to get out the tripod on a recent clear night. (It was entirely too cold for me to bother getting out my own 5'' Meade telescope, so I just used my 55-300mm lens, allowing a much quicker escape back inside to the warmth after these shots were taken :) )

The second image shows the lower half of Orion, the three belt stars being visible slightly left off center, and the Orion nebula (M42) below that.

The second image shows the Pleiades star cluster (M45)

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Thanks Pete, I can never resist taking a shot of the moon!

Thanks Beth, I've noticed that as well. I took a few before this that that had the stars turning into little arcs.

It is tricky indeed Rob! Sometimes I think I can almost hear my camera's confusion about just what kind of tricks I'm pulling on it, asking for clear pictures of these little moving points of light! Thanks for the kind words :)
 
Hi Matthew, very good start! :) You can achieve wonderful things with bit of image stacking and longer exposure times :) The only requirement is a lot of clear skies and 2-3 weeks of practice :)
 
Thanks for the tip Martin, I'll definitely have to try the stacking method. One of my assignments in this past semester's astronomy class was creating images from short video clips using registax, so I should remember enough to keep me busy :) Now if someone can just loan me some of those clear skies!
 
Matthew McKendry said:
Thanks for the tip Martin, I'll definitely have to try the stacking method. One of my assignments in this past semester's astronomy class was creating images from short video clips using registax, so I should remember enough to keep me busy :) Now if someone can just loan me some of those clear skies!
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something i read once said to divide 500 by your focal length to get the slowest shutter speed you can use for sharp stars. not sure where i read it or if it's really true, but it's worked well for me.
 
I'll hopefully be able to get it pretty decent through my telescope. I tried some shots through it recently while it was still on an altitude/azimuth alignment, but as I expected the tracking wasn't precise enough for long exposures. Next time the weather allows some telescope action I'll switch to an equatorial alignment and see how that goes, hopefully my trusty meade is up to the job :)
 
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