Calling all Astrophotographers, all skill levels. Post your work.

Originally posted by buddha
how do you feel that ATS
can sell your photos and make money of you?

Best of luck to them. I don't do this to make money, I do this to share the beauty of the universe. If someone else wants to use it to turn a profit from it, best of luck, I have neither the time nor the inclination to do so.

Originally posted by buddha
You have not put your name as copy rights.
so ATS and any one can Sell your work.

you need to put at the bottom in small print,
your name and copy right.

how do you feel that ATS
can sell your photos and make money of you?

farcebook and twater steal your work to.

In my nearly ten years here, I cannot ever remember anyone being taking advantage of in that way.
The poster, by default is the copyright holder, whether it's signed or not.
I do think that ATS might use an image for some reason or another, but if I remember correctly, we've always contacted the originator of the material first.
A nice plus here, is that members in good standing can put a little link to their body of work, if it sits on another website. It's really win-win. In My opinion.

Here is a Geminid Meteor From 2004
I was using a Sony DSC-F707. Opening the aperture for 12 seconds at a time. Over and over and over again. Hoping I would catch something. In this case, I did. This one was very bright, and did illuminate the surrounding hills, like lightning in the distance. It also looks like it's emanating from Betelgeuse.

Originally posted by buddha
You have not put your name as copy rights.
so ATS and any one can Sell your work.

That's not true. Copyright is automatic. Doesn't rely on any markings or registrations.

reply to post by qd22vcc


Thank you! What it takes is practice and patience. You really don't have to get too fancy to get good results. I'm shooting a three year old, well worn Canon Rebel. I shoot full manual 98% of the time, and take my time with the post processing.

Is that a Fist coming out of the crater? LOL

Originally posted by Speedtek
Moon Close Up

Originally posted by buddha
You have not put your name as copy rights.
so ATS and any one can Sell your work.

you need to put at the bottom in small print,
your name and copy right.

how do you feel that ATS
can sell your photos and make money of you?

farcebook and twater steal your work to.

Well up to the point that the above was posted this thread did exactly what it said on the tin as they say, people posted their work others commented even if they dont have the equipment to take images themselves.

To be honest buddha very few of those images are full res versions and lets be honest a quick image search on google will get you many versions of any of those objects pictured some better than those posted some worse.

This thread is about what members on here can do to take and process images there are obviously many keen photographers on here with a great range of equipment and more importantly KNOW HOW which we can all share with each other.

As for copyright there are PLENTY of members on here that don't believe in that in the first place, so lets try to keep this thread the way it should be about the images/video we can show.

There are other threads to discuss copyright and moonbases (we had one hopefully tongue in cheek comment re that) etc so we don't need posts on here about it.

Originally posted by Silcone Synapse
reply to post by iksose7

 

Wow,just awesome images iksose7!!!
Incredible images indeed.
If you have not done so,make a seperate thread of all your best astro images please!

Thanks for your kind words SS! I would love to make a thread with all my best images but i've pretty much put all of my best on this thread i may at the end of the year though once i have aquired a few more images with tracking.
I may however make a thread showing what kind of results you can get without tracking, this is something i did when taking single images was starting to get stale and i had nothing to track the stars with. Take multiple images and stack them to bring out more detail!

reply to post by ngchunter

Cheers NGCHunter! Yes, i had been wanting to image the Iris for quite a while aswell. Was quite dissapointed with my result to be honest as that whole area is absolutely chock-a-blocked with dust. I hardly picked up anything but thats all the more reason to re-visit!
Thats a real shame about you getting banned and loosing that data, what kind of a website wouldnt want an Astrophotographer!

Heres one of my first images with my Astrotrac and probably my least favourite out of what i have

The Rosette Nebula or 'Caldwell 49' if you want to get all technical taken with a 70-300mm (just a note here for anybody thinking about buying a lens for astro imaging, DONT BUY A ZOOM LENS. Buy a prime, 9.5 times out of 10 they will yeild superiour results)

And i'm surprised i've not seen this one on the thread yet. Heres a widefied view of M31, our galactic neighbor, The Andromeda Galaxy!

This is less than an hours worth of exposure and believe it or not was taken with a 50mm lens. A great astro lens. Obviously this has been heavily cropped.

I am really looking forward to imaging this galaxy in a couple months with my new lens!

reply to post by wmd_2008



Hey WMD I have done a thread with a diy how to make a good solid camera mount on the cheap O yes you know I'm a cheap skate lol anyway if your interested here's the link www.abovetopsecret.com...

Also I have done a vid of what my basic setup is power, lighting and what lens I have bought

Originally posted by buddha
You have not put your name as copy rights.
so ATS and any one can Sell your work.

you need to put at the bottom in small print,
your name and copy right.

how do you feel that ATS
can sell your photos and make money of you?

farcebook and twater steal your work to.

Could care less.
If I didn't want people looking at my pictures, I wouldn't post them online.

How about a good way to practice photographing meteors?

Meteor showers are predictable. We know when they occur, and why they occur. They are clumpy streams of debris they follow the orbits of comets, and some asteroids. Generally small particles that have been blown off the surface of those parent bodies. This weekend, is the peak of shower called the Eta Aquarid. Member Fireballstorm, has created a great thread about this shower, and it's surprising source, for those who don't know.
Here is that thread.www.abovetopsecret.com...

Now back to meteors in general. The showers may be predictable, but each individual meteor is not. If you have a nice tripod, and some sort of automatic shutter control, you can just point your tripod mounted camera, and let it snap photo after photo..Then look through them all later. Otherwise, you sit with the camera, and use a cable release, and do it manually. The first method is preferred, because you can lay back and watch the sky while your camera does it's work.

How to practice?
Iridium satellites, that's how. Iridiums, are a large group of satellites that have flat reflective surfaces. Those surfaces can sometimes reflect sunlight from over the horizon, directly down to you!
To find out if one of these satellites is going to produce an "Iridium Flare" at your location simply visit a website called Heavens Above. Then click on Iridium flares. you will get a listing of potentially visible flares for your area. The list will include the brightness, or magnitude. The lower the number, the better.

Here is a chart showing magnitudes of familiar objects, from that site.

Sun -26.7 (about 400 000 times brighter than full Moon!)
Full Moon -12.7
Brightest Iridium flares -8
Venus (at brightest) -4.4
International Space Station -2
Sirius (brightest star) -1.44
Limit of human eye +6 to +7
Limit of 10x50 binoculars +9
Pluto +14
Limit of Hubble Space Telescope +30

So now you know, when, and where. You just have to point your camera in that direction, and open the shutter.
More predictable than a meteor. But a great way to practice.

Here is one of my results.

reply to post by iksose7


Pretty good images I think. You can kind of make out some pink around the Rosette. And the Andromeda shot is great too. Good advice about the Zoom versus Prime lens's. Is it a matter of focusing that is the problem?

Originally posted by spacedoubt
reply to post by iksose7

 

Pretty good images I think. You can kind of make out some pink around the Rosette. And the Andromeda shot is great too. Good advice about the Zoom versus Prime lens's. Is it a matter of focusing that is the problem?

Thank you, i am very happy with the Andromeda image but the Rosette has not been processed very well, that combined with shooting it with a poor lens.Its not so much focus that is the problem, its the optical quality. You will notice in most of the images i have posted on this thread that the star shapes are not round. I think this is the main problem with the zoom lens i used to have. With my new EF200L you can see that the stars are nice and round from corner to corner. You can also see that in my image of M31 which was shot with a 50mm f1.8. Prime lens usually use a much better qualtiy glass aswell. Alot less comatic aberrtion in primes. You pay more but its worth it.

Now onto what you were saying about meteor showers. I think the best way to image them is with some kind of tracking platform. Although, only having my Astrotrac for a couple of months i have not had a chance yet to try and image a meteor shower with it.

But next time there is one i will do the following:
Choose the widest lens i have, in my case 18mm and mount it with my camera on some form of startracker. Focus on whatever constellation the shower is coming from. Use an intervalometre (if using Nikon cameras i believe these are built in on some models?) set my exposure length - say 1 minute - and how many images i want to take - alot! Then you can leave it shooting all night long.

Next day load all images up and if you want and know how to, make a composite so you have a final image with all the meteors you captured that night. If you are any good at light painting you could even layer in a nice foreground. I've seen some killer images done like this.

Hope this helps someone, best of luck.

reply to post by jaffer44


Hi jaffer44 I saw that when you first posted it, it not what something costs that counts it's how it's used and the results it can get.

Originally posted by iksose7

Originally posted by spacedoubt
reply to post by iksose7

 

Pretty good images I think. You can kind of make out some pink around the Rosette. And the Andromeda shot is great too. Good advice about the Zoom versus Prime lens's. Is it a matter of focusing that is the problem?

Thank you, i am very happy with the Andromeda image but the Rosette has not been processed very well, that combined with shooting it with a poor lens.Its not so much focus that is the problem, its the optical quality. You will notice in most of the images i have posted on this thread that the star shapes are not round. I think this is the main problem with the zoom lens i used to have. With my new EF200L you can see that the stars are nice and round from corner to corner. You can also see that in my image of M31 which was shot with a 50mm f1.8. Prime lens usually use a much better qualtiy glass aswell. Alot less comatic aberrtion in primes. You pay more but its worth it.

Now onto what you were saying about meteor showers. I think the best way to image them is with some kind of tracking platform. Although, only having my Astrotrac for a couple of months i have not had a chance yet to try and image a meteor shower with it.

But next time there is one i will do the following:
Choose the widest lens i have, in my case 18mm and mount it with my camera on some form of startracker. Focus on whatever constellation the shower is coming from. Use an intervalometre (if using Nikon cameras i believe these are built in on some models?) set my exposure length - say 1 minute - and how many images i want to take - alot! Then you can leave it shooting all night long.

Next day load all images up and if you want and know how to, make a composite so you have a final image with all the meteors you captured that night. If you are any good at light painting you could even layer in a nice foreground. I've seen some killer images done like this.

Hope this helps someone, best of luck.

Thanks for the additional advice on Shooting shooting stars..
I think I am going to begin investing in Upgrading my ability to shoot astrophotography. From what i am reading
it seems a lot of though has to be put on stability and tracking. Which makes sense. Too much coffee, and no tripod never makes for a good astrophoto.

Since I have a dsr. I would want to be able to mount it on my tripod with a tracker of some sort. But later, I would like to replace the dslr, with a telescope, then mount the dslr to the telescope to do the imaging. Advice on that?

Really like this thread and the work everyone has posted. I'll add some of my own. All images taken using a celestron C8-NGT newtonian and a canon EOS T3i camera. These are all unguided images so are short exposures. I just recently purchased an Orion SSAG so soon I should have guided images with much better exposure.

M8 - The Lagoon Nebula

This photo is of M27, the Dumbell Nebula. Normally I try to get 30 to 40 images with an exposure time between 60 to 90 seconds each. This session my scope alignment wasn't so hot so I was only able to shoot 45 second exposures. I post process using DSS to stack the images and use Star Tools to do the final finishing. My intial result of this object was pretty poor. Bad vignetting and lots of light pollution. Star Tools helped remove all that and produced a "not bad" image I think.

A very under-exposed M16, the Eagle Nebula. This object is high on my list to capture again when Sagittarius is better positioned in the sky for me and I have the autoguider working. Still, its very cool to be able to see objects like this even though the photos aren't hubble quality. This was taken with 20 images of 60 second exposures.

This is M17, the Swan nebula. One of my favorite nebulas to view through the eyepiece. It's very bright, quite large and easy to see. Not as spectacular as M42, but just as pleasing. This was capture using short 45 second exposures, but I forgot how many lights I took as I didn't document it at the time.