Novomber 1 2006 - Sunrise over mount Baker!

Although not quite astronomy related it is a picture of the sky! Sometimes we need not look very far into deespace to see some beautiful things. Sometimes they are just above us! This morning was one of those times! Two very quick shots not much processing nor was a telescope used. I just dont have the time to do much processing today as I have an exam tomorow! Pictures taken with a canon G3.

August 29 2006 - Satellite or Asteroid?

On August 29, I was photographing M11 with my 10" LX200 and canon G3 digital camera when I noticed that on three photographs of the many that I took of M11 to stack and process showed a small trail indicating a slow moving object. So I decided to create the following animation of the object as it moved across the feild of view. What do you think it is? When I showed this animation to one forum, they all agreed that it could be an asteroid because of the fact that the object took about a minute to move across the FOV in other words it moved too slow to be a satellite. But then When I showed the same animation to another completely different astronomy club, they seem to all agree that it was a satellite. perhaps a geostationary satellite because if an asteroid was moving that fast it would have to be very close to earth. Originaly I figured it was a satellite but remain uncertain of what it could actualy be. The first picture was taken at aproximately 9:38 EST on August 29 2006 from Mississauga Ontario. The reason why there is so much noise in these frames is because these are raw frames. The only processing done was to darken the background and try to brighten the stars and trail so to be more evident. Resizing was also done. On the middle frame you will notice that half of the picture is extreamly noisy, this is due to the fact that I have been taking many pictures at 15 secs each and thus building up heat on my camera and for some reason when my camera heats up once in a while a pictures comes out half noisy. Unfortunately it had to happen just as the object was going across the feild!

Stats for this animation:

3 x 15 second exposures @ ISO400, no zoom, F3.2

Meade 10" LX200 SCT, scopetronix 40mm MaxView plossal, Canon G3 4MP digital camera.

ImageJ was used to reduce background glow, Advanced GIF animator was used to make animation.

August 29, 2006 - Uranus and Neptune and Solar System

Here are my latest planetary pics! Although both planets don't say much other then their color, it is next to imposible to capture any other detail. Even in the largest of earth based telescopes you will only see a colored disk without any cloud details. So that being said I am extramly happy with these results and I believe them to be my best planetary pics I have ever done!



Uranus - Taken with a Meade 10" LX200 SCT, Canon G3 digital camera, 25mm ep and 2x barlow. Picture is composed of 36 stacked exposures of 4 seconds each. The camera was set at 4x zoom with f/3.2 and ISO50. The actual picture was slightly underexposed which worked to my advantage and provided with a fairly good color representation. In this image however some color fringing was evident so after doing some sharpening, it seemed to remove some or most of the color fringe.



Neptune - This is also my bets neptune pic I ever took. This was again taken with the same equipment as the uranus shot except that I used a 40mm eyepiece and 2x barlow. The planet was too faint on the 25mm eyepeice and became next to impossible to focus the planet. This picture was composed of 10 stacked images at 3 second exposures, 4x zoom and ISO50 at f3.2. Again the planet was very underexposed but after adjusting the curves on each frame in photoshop it seemed to work quite well with the color balance.



A portriat of the solar system which includes pictures taken at different times and with different telescopes including the last two uranus and neptune shots! All pics taken by me.

August 22 2006 - Thin Moon and M42

M42 (luminance) Taken with my Meade 10" LX200 and Canon G3 4mp digital camera. A Maxview 40mm eyepeice was used. Camera settings were 1x zoom, 12 x 15 sec exposures (180 sec equiv) @ ISO400. No guiding was employed. IRIS was then used to stack the 12 frames. Conditions were horrible as Orion was low in the horizon and right beside a street lamp so I was glad with the results. Both image J and photoshop were also used t resize, reduce an great amount of noise and brightness (due to street light) and bring out a bit more of the nebula. Please click on photo to enlarge.



Left picture: Single M42 shot unprocessed, 15 second exposure @ISO400, 1x zoom 10" LX200 SCT. As you can see in this image, the sky brightness and noise was terrible. This was the direct cause of the street lamp which was quite literaly about 3 moon widths away. It was also fairly close to the horizon and seeing was not great.

Right image: Is the procesed stackked frames with the same settings as the luminance photo above. The only difference here is that it was processed using the RGB method on iris. As you can see the processing removed much of the noise and background brightness but left some of the fainter nebula visible. Processing and stacking images can make a huge difference as is evident from the original to the finished picture! Please click on photo to enlarge.



The Trapezium taken with my Meade 10" LX200 and Canon G3 4mp digital camera. A Maxview 40mm eyepeice was used. Camera settings were 4x zoom, 6 x 15 sec exposures (90 sec equiv) @ ISO400. No guiding was employed. IRIS was then used to stack the 6 frames. Please click on photo to enlarge.



This image of the moon was taken in almost broad daylight! It is less then 24 hours away from new moon thus was very thin indeed. Finding such a moon in daylight is fairly challenging if you dont know where to look. It helped that I have an LX200 which can automaticaly take me to the moon but even then through the finderscope i could barely see something. Photographing it was even more of a challenge due to te bright blue sky background which made the moon almost invinsible in the eepeice. This photo was taken with a 10" LX200 SCT and my canon G3 4mp camera set at 1x zoom and ISO50. A maxview 40mm eyepeice was used. The original photo, you could just see a slight hint of the moon so I had to edit it to try and bring out the moon more and darken the background too. It was no easy task and the picture looks "unreal" but either way you can see how thin the moon was. This was one single frame. Phot shop and imageJ were used to try and bring out the moon. Click to enlarge.

July 13 2006 - Another Lunar Mosaic

Another lunar mosaic taken with my 10" LX200 and canon G3 digital camera. Again blogger reduces the size of the image dramaticaly so if you want the full version just e-mail me at elco1980@gmail.com. Ill gladly send you a large version. Please click on photo to see a larger version.

July 6 2006 - HUGE lunar mosaics!

This is one of the biggest mosaics I have ever done! Blogger however, reduces its size by like ten times so it does not do it any justice! If your interested in seeing these in full size please e-mail me (elco1980@gmail.com) and will send them to you. Aprox size of file is 1.6MB. Images taken with 10" SCT and Canon G3 digital camera at 4X zoom and using a maxview 40mm plossal eyepeice.

June 15 2006 - Jupiter (First shots of my season)

These two shots were taken about 30-40 minutes apart and it illustrates the motion of the moons and the shadow of the moon on jupiter. By far not my best shots but very happy with them since they are my first jupiter shots and first shots with my 10" scope in over a year. Above picture is 1/6 second exposure at iso50 4X zoom and 2x barlow. It is 24 stacked images. The second one is 1/8 second exposure at iso 50 4x zoom and 2x barlow. Both images taken with my 10" LX200 SCT and a scopetronix 25mm plossal. Canon g3 4mp camera running at f3.0 was used.

May 2 2006 - Daytime moon pics

The following are pictures that I took on May 2 2006. They were taken with my 80mm refractor, canon G3 digital camera and my maxview 40mm plossal. I never have much luck with daylight moon pics or venus pics but todays moon pic came out okey. It is very hard to get good contrasting details during the daylight because the bright blue sky washes out alot of the contrast. the following two pictures were taken during daylight hours. Please click on the images to enlarge them.




The next picture is of the moon taken a couple of hours later when it was fairly dark. I am quite happy with this result. The image is composed of 12 stacked images taken with the same equipment as the above pictures. Please click on the images to enlarge them.



The following image was taken just after the above picture. Yes they are not pretty but they are not meant to be. I intentionaly overexposed it (exposure of 2 seconds)to try and bring out the earthshine. This earthshine is light that bounces from the earth and lights up the night part of the moon. It is the same as a "moon lit" night and when the moon is a a thin crescent, you can esily see the earthshine. The image is composed of 3 stacked images. Please click on the images to enlarge.