This is five shots taken with my *ist DL2 on my Dads 8" F5 Newtonian, stacked using Registax and sharpened a bit in Photoplus. I was pretty pleased with the outcome



EXIF

1000mm
F5
1/1000th
ISO200

Quote from: MongooseThis is five shots taken with my *ist DL2 on my Dads 8" F5 Newtonian, stacked using Registax and sharpened a bit in Photoplus. I was pretty pleased with the outcome

(Image removed from quote.)

Thats f*kin excellent  

Quote from: brummieThats f*kin excellent  

Yeah, what he said 1000mm is that astro-photography, a la pointing camera through a telescope?

Its nice that you were so zoomed in, as you could use a fast shutter, high F number etc so you get a real nice picture

Hopefully in the next few days I will have my adaptor tube in order to turn my Panasonic FZ20 F/36-432 into a 950mm equivalent

Wont produce pics as good as that but Im interested to see how close it gets.

make sure you have a tripod mate even using my teleconvertor (the 1.85x one) I find it difficult to remove complete shake, granted you have IS but still... tripod is the way to go

Also long exposures of the moon suck... it turns in to a bloody sun! lol completely whitewashing the frame lol. Damn thing.

thanks guys

I mount the camera using a T-mount adaptor where the eyepiece would normally go on a newtonian astro-scope (a Celestron C-8N to be exact). Even at 1000mm I still had to do some cropping, Im going to try again sometime soon with a 2x TC for 2000mm (3000mm 35mm equivalent). At that focal length the moon fills the frame with no cropping. I have a couple of frames at 2000mm already, but not enough for the stacking I used here so this one ended up less noisy.

This summers project for Dad and I is to get a webcam rigged to the scope. You might think that a DSLR would be better, but with a webcam you can get 30FPS which is ideal for stacking when you dont have motor drives. Hoping to get some nice pics of Jupiter and Saturn when its all up and running.

The trick when shooting the moon is to remember that while you are in darkness, the moon itself is in direct sunlight. Unless you have a very long lens your meter will get confused by the bright moon in a dark sky, so shoot in manual unless you are using at least 1000mm. Start from the good old Sunny 16 rule. That is, at Apperture F16 a shutter speed of 1/ISO will give good exposure for a subject in bright sunlight. Now there is a lot of atmosphere between us and the moon so you usually need to boost this exposure a little, say to F11 or F8 and 1/ISO, but it works pretty well.

Also the moon moves pretty fast so try and keep your shutter speed above 1/100th.

Adaptor arrived this morning    M3ta7h3ad, I used a tripod on the Whitley bay test photies I put up, its definitely needed to get photies in dark weather or at night.

your in luck, we have night errrrrr every night !!  

Some are better than others though

Awesome photo.

Nows a good time to be observing Jupiter too, the great red spot is colliding with another huge storm on its surface.

this weekend was the first time Ive ever actually manage to see the Great Red Spot. It was so clear. I tried to take some piccys there too but a DSLR isnt much use for the planets.

chuck it in bulb mode mate. should do fine then.

the plannets move too fast for long exposures unless you have a motor drive for the telescope. Hopefully one day, but not just yet!

There is another problem with digital SLRs attached to telescopes, quite simply the sensor gets warm on long exposures which can cause some noise, it needs cooling. Some have switched the camera off until the last possible moment and again between shots which supposedly gives a better result. Might be better to use a webcam and mod it to keep it cold.

Problem then though is that the resolution isnt as good, usually 1.3 megapixels and the lens will be poor. Better off removing the lens and using the telescope eyepiece. A proper camera for use with a telescope was expensive last time I looked at a price but might have improved.

Quote from: SeriousHopefully in the next few days I will have my adaptor tube in order to turn my Panasonic FZ20 F/36-432 into a 950mm equivalent

Arrived this morning, works well enough to hand hold if sunny. 1/500 sec plus the integral image stabilisation seems to work well enough so that at least most of shots should come out.

Better on a tripod though to give stability.