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.

Using Registax

Hello world,

This is my latest creation. This is an image of the moon. I combined two photo's that I made with my NexImage. In Registax and did some editing in Photoshop to enhance the details.

Getting there...

Finally i'm getting somewhere.... The conditions weren't ideal but still good enough for this picture. I'm sure that under perfect conditions, a lot is possible with this telescope.

Latest attempt

This is my latest attempt to photograph the moon. Although the seeing was bad, the moon was much higher in the sky. I also experimented with Registax and Photoshop to get a sharper image.

Another picture of the moon

This is an earlier attempt to make a picture of the moon. I used a 6" Newton telescoop, that i build myself. For the photo i used a Philips Vesta Pro webcam. In this attempt I only took a single shot. There is a technique where you take a video file (AVI). I will try this later on.

Testing my new telescope

I bought a new telescope this week. Last saturday it was clear enough for the first tests. Although the seeing wasn't good, the moon was low and trees blocked my sight, i managed to shoot some foto's. I used a Celestron Neximage digital astrocamera. I use Registax to convert the AVI-file into a single picture. In Photoshop i enhanced the picture some more. See my results!