My airplane video..

See my airplane video:

Moon and airplane

When you're outside a lot you will encouter the odd chance to take a picture like this. I photographed this on april 22.

M13 - Globular cluster in Hercules

This week finaly clear skies again. I had a shot at M13. This is a globular cluster that belongs to our own galaxy. In total I took twenty photo's with an exposion of 1 minute on 800 ASA. These photo's where stacked with DeepSkyStacker. In this case you get a photo with a total exposure time of 20 minutes. After that a little touch-up in Photoshop. For those of you who realy pay attention: In the upper left corner NGC 6207 is also visible. This galaxy has an apparent magnitude of 12,1!

Saturn

This is my latest attempt to photograph Saturn. Yesterday we had clear sky's and de seeing was good. Technical data:

Philips Vesta Pro on a 200 mm F5 Newton

Barlow (3x) and a IR/UV blocking filter

600 images (590 used) stacked witch RegiStax

This is a course result. It still needs some photoshopping ;-)

I'm pleased with the result

M51 - second attempt

After a few tips from fellow amateur-astronomers I went outside and had another go at M51. Also I mastered some techniques in Photoshop. See the picture below for the latest result...

Deepsky

A couple of day's ago I started with deepsky photography. I made photo's with the camera piggyback on the telescope (see the post down below). Finaly I managed to connect my Canon 350D on to the telescope. Last night was a very clear night. Ideal to shoot some pictures. It took me almost 4 hours to take the pictures. I needed a lot of time to prepare the telescope. :-)
For all pictures I used a camera sensetivity of 1600 ASA. I shot 10 pictures with a shutterspeed of 30 seconds (total exposure time 5 minutes). The seperate pictures where combined to one with DeepSkyStacker. For the final touch-up I used Photoshop. See my results in the enclosed pictures (click on one of the pictures to see the enlargement):

New Camera

This week i bought a new camera. The canon 350D. This camera is very suiteable to make astrophoto's. In the next couple of weeks I am going to test it on different objects. This summer a take my telescope with me on holiday. I expect that in southern France the conditions will be exellent. Here is also a photo with the camera "piggyback" on my telescope. With a camera wich has a ISO value of 1600 and long exposures it schould be possible to make magnificent photographs. Check for results later on.

Using the new camera

Yesterday I bought a new digital camera. The Canon EOS 350D. I made a test photo of the open cluster is the constelation Perseus. On the photo there are stars visible up to mag. 12! I didn't have much time to make more photo's. In the next test session I will try to get better results.

Finally The sun

It doesn't look like much but this is my first picture of the sun. Right in the middle is sunspot 944. I used a "solar-screen" sun filter. And the webcam was used to take the picture. 266 images stacked. The next couple of years we go to a solar maximum. That means a lot of sunspots. And hopefully also bigger ones ;-).

Focusser "Chris-style........

Behold! I ordered a radio knob at Conrads. It reduces the adjustment turns on my focusser 6 times. This way it is easy to fine focus on any object. It just costs me € 30,- instead of a "original" finefocusser of € 165,- :-)

Mail me and I will send you the details.

Saturn with filter

Getting a step closer again!!! This week I bought a Baader UV/IR filter. This filter blocks infra-red and ultra-violet light. This light tends to blur the image. In the enclosed picture you can see the results. The sharpest image up to now! Although the seeing was poor! There is a slight colour abberation. I suspect that this is due to bad collimation. I try to fix that later on.

Click on the image to see it in its original size!

The moons of Saturn

In this (over)exposed image you can see five of Saturn's moons. From left to right you can see Iapetus, Titan, Tethys, Dione and Rhea. The faintest moon on this picture is mag 10! I'm happy with the result.

Saturn RGB

After re-programming my webcam, i could use it to make RAW images. Altough they are in black and white, they are a lot sharper. All I need is a technique to proces the RGB greyscale images into a color image. But for the time being I very happy with the results up to now. If anyone has tips and / or tricks, please let me know.

Saturn in greater detail

Behold.... my finest result until now! It took me a while but i'm very pleased with this result. This photo is taken with a Philips Vesta webcam. I stacked 200 frames into this picture. The exposure time was 1/25 sec. per frame. To take a step further i will need a UV/IR filter. This will give a sharper image. So, another item on my next wish list...... ;-)

The moon (with high magnification)

This time a photo of the moon with high magnification. By using a 3x Barlow lens in primary focus, the magnification is boosted to approx. 600 times. Getting the picture sharp is very difficult. My focuser is very sensitif. I hope to show better photo's later on.

Saturn with barlowlens

Well, here it is! Saturn! Fotographed with an 8 inch Newton telescope and a 3x barlow lens. I know I'm not there yet but I'm getting there.
I used 300 frames, stacked with RegiStax 4.0. Furthermore I used Photoshop to sharpen en colour the photo (perhaps I overdone it a little).
The seeing at the time of the photo was poor. Also Saturn stood only 20 degrees above the horizon. I'm sure the photo's will get better under better conditions.

Using Neximage in primary focus

This is my latest picture of the the moon. I used my Neximage in the primary focus of my telescoop. This week I ordered a Barlow lens. This way it is possible to get even better photo's. I hope to show you the results in a short while.

Regards and clear sky's to everyone...

Deepsky anyone???

This is my first try on deepsky photography. I used a Konica Minolta Z2 digital camera. This camera was mounted "piggyback". I took 10 frames with an exposure of 30 seconds each. The film sensetivity was 400 ASA. I used AstroStack to stack the pictures into one frame. On the original picture (12 Mb TIFF) the blue reflection nebulae around de stars 0f M45 are a littlebit visable. This photo contains star up to Mvis 11!

First color image

This week I experimented with my Konica Minolta Z2 digital camera. With PVC pipe I constructed an adaptor that i can use with my telescope. This way I can make color pictures of the moon with a high resolution. This 4 Mb images can be enlarged and printed with high detail. If you want to know how the adaptor was constructed, just let me know.
Click on the image too see the bigger picture.

Saturn

Last month, early in the morning I managed to take a picture of saturn. Because I didn't use a Barlow lens the image is quite small. The photo was taken by using a Celestron Neximage. This device records a AVI movie file. With Registax these AVI picture frames are combined to one frame. Also, lots of unseen details are enhanced this way.