Amateur Moon photos.

cool

Originally posted by ngchunter
Here's my latest video of the moon:

The camera I use is a fairly cheap security camera which happens to have a lot of features perfect for astrophotography. I use a c-mount to t-thread adapter and then a t-thread to 1.25" adapter to mount it directly into the telescope. Assuming your scope can use the 1.25" standard eyepieces, a similar setup could work for you too.

www.123securityproducts.com...

(AC419, 19th entry down on the page by my count):
www.astro-engineering.com...

If your scope uses the smaller japanese standard eyepieces (.965") you can use the first adapter on the last link to take the 1.25" adapter down to .965" If that's the case though I can't guarantee the telescope will be able to reach focus back to the camera, especially if it's a refractor.

[edit on 6-7-2010 by ngchunter]

some movies i made with an Orion TX8







[edit on 30-7-2010 by Grifter.be]

[edit on 30-7-2010 by Grifter.be]

reply to post by Grifter.be


Those are pretty good.

I'm going to hold off on my astrophotography hopes until I can get a T adapter and maybe a better camera.

It's hard to get good views holding the camera up to the eyepiece by hand.

thx and yes, it certainly is, although, i used some plastic rubber belts... so i strapped on a cheap cam on the eyepiece..

[edit on 3-8-2010 by Grifter.be]

it certainly is, although, i used some plastic rubber belts... so i strapped on a cheap cam on the eyepiece..

A movie i made with moon footage of mine and some clean facts on the moon!!!!

Nice thread OP S&F

I hope you don't mind if I add a couple of photo's I took last week using a similar method. I just held my point and shoot to the eyepiece and well although not the greatest of pics I was really impressed.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/baa21420e92b.jpg[/atsimg]

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/eae7f7985161.jpg[/atsimg]

And here is the best one I could get of Jupiter, it doesn't do it justice as it was beautiful with the moons shining brightly away. It was also my first view of Jupiter through my scope.
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/db1a96671dc3.jpg[/atsimg]

So basically crappy Belgian weather aside I am getting all excited to push on further, currently looking into getting some more eye pieces, different filters and I definitely need a go to mount. Also I have a Canon 20D already so I need a mount for that too.

Does anybody have any ideas on how I can view the planets so they are not so small? I guess it means an eyepiece upgrade.

edit: also how do I do the sidebars for large images on ATS?

[edit on 30-8-2010 by pazcat]

reply to post by pazcat


Nice images, thanks for adding.

The previous full moon was the most distant and smallest of the year so it should have been a good view. I didn't get a chance to look at it though.

Next month around the 25th of Sept. Saturn will be at opposition which means its at its closest pass to the Earth and should be as large and bright as it gets in the sky.

To view smaller planets you need a telescope I believe with a large diameter to allow for more light collection. Having stronger eyepieces may magnify the planet but won't necessarily make it clearer or better to see. You could try getting a Barlow lens and seeing if that helps, I plan on adding one to my set up.

Why not use a regular cam against te eyepiece? I filmed the moon with this, and in Belgium ja ja :p

Question about telescopes. As I understand it the big ones now are made so there is 2 or more and they can cancel out athmospheric distorsions. Could this work with smaller amateur telescopes too?

reply to post by ThaLoccster


Thanks for the reply
Yeah the moon was great on the 23rd when I took those pics and Jupiter was very close by to the moon, the moonlight probably affected my view of Jupiter but hey it was my first look at it so I'm still excited by it.
My scope is 150mm diameter and 1200mm focal and have a x2 barlow and 10mm and 25mm wideangle eyepieces, so I'm thinking of trying a x3 barlow if I can. Honestly I think I am better off concentrating on my dslr for better imaging I'm still a beginner so I will learn as I go I guess.

@ Grifter.be
For my photo's I used a normal kodak silver point and shoot digital cam held up to the eyepiece, probably I could of tried something different but I'm not sure what. As I have a dslr and decent software I want to explore what I can come up with using long exposures on different objects, I think I should be able to clear up Jupiter at least a lot better than the pic I showed.
Also you're from Belgium, that's cool. I am not a native but live here now and I enjoy it here

@ PsykoOps
What?
Not too sure what you mean, but cancelling out atmospheric distortion would depend what you are looking at and what you are using to look at it with. Maybe if you can be a bit clearer with what you mean we can help. Well somebody else might at least I'm not the best.


[edit on 31-8-2010 by pazcat]

reply to post by PsykoOps


I think you mean adaptive optics. There are amateur systems for adding adaptive optics like the sbig ao-7. That operates via a different method than professional systems and is only designed for deep space work generally. For lunar and planetary we just use lucky imaging techniques; that does the same job as adaptive optics would and gets us close to the theoretical limits of our scopes' resolution.

That could be the term I was looking for. I remember a discovery piece on a new telescope that was being build and that they said it would be better than hubble because there were 2 identical ones. They use both to get a single image therefore cancelling most local distorsions afaik. That probably only works for deeper objects that aren't moving so fast but I was thinking that could modern tracking / computer technology over come that?

Originally posted by PsykoOps
That could be the term I was looking for. I remember a discovery piece on a new telescope that was being build and that they said it would be better than hubble because there were 2 identical ones. They use both to get a single image therefore cancelling most local distorsions afaik. That probably only works for deeper objects that aren't moving so fast but I was thinking that could modern tracking / computer technology over come that?

Oh, the large binocular telescope? Yeah, I think the main advantage of having two large ones separated by a known distance is that you can perform interferometry with it (it also has its own adaptive optics but that's pretty much unrelated to the fact that there's two of them). Adaptive optics on the planets is just rather redundant and needless overkill since we can do lucky imaging. Because you can use fast exposures for the planets that are only a fraction of a second long, you can "beat" the distortions; if you take video long enough, you'll catch a brief moment when the air is extremely steady here and there, and if you collect enough of those moments, isolate them, and average them together, you get a very high resolution image which shows virtually no distortions at all just as you would with the most advanced adaptive optics. Here's an example from last night.

Raw video:
www.ustream.tv...

After lucky imaging and stacking:
i319.photobucket.com...

You can't use that technique on deep space though because very long exposures are a requirement and there is no way to "beat the seeing."

reply to post by ngchunter


Thats a great pic of Jupiter.

reply to post by ThaLoccster


Man thats a rocking first try,especially using a phone as the camera!
Well done,and keep at it-I expect a nice photo of Mars with atmosphere by next summer!


See if ya can grab a cheapo camera mount to fit onto the scope,will help with stability loads!
Good job.

reply to post by ThaLoccster


Thanks! I'm still trying to get the hang of wavelet sharpening in registax, how much is too much, etc. I'm thinking about making a time lapse video of Jupiter's rotation later using a series of stacked images like that one, but that kind of undertaking requires more time than I have right now. It took about 15 minutes for my computer to stack just that one image.

[edit on 2-9-2010 by ngchunter]

nice pic, here some more moon footage!

www.youtube.com...

Ok, so it's not exactly moon footage, but it is amateur. A quick tour of the universe from yours truly starting close to home and expanding out to 41 million light years:

reply to post by ngchunter


That's pretty spectacular footage man, what type of telescope do you have?