Space and Other Non-laser Distractions...

[KapHn8d]

Howdy, peeps! I've been away several weeks with some distractions pulling me away from the colorful beams for a bit. Mostly, it has been work and the process of buying a patch of dirt for my wife and I to eventually build a house on... that has been involved. Of my hobbies, the only one I've really made a little time for is photography, but I think today's Argon-Ion stretch may have got my photon juices flowing again.

Anyhoo, here are some recent shots of mine that I wanted to share:

Waxing Gibbous moon from last week:




Messier 31 - the Andromeda Galaxy:

The Andromeda Galaxy (Messier 31 or NGC 224) is about 2.5 million light years from us and is the nearest spiral galaxy to our Milky Way.



Messier 33 - the Triangulum Galaxy:

The Triangulum Galaxy is a spiral galaxy approximately 3 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Triangulum. It is cataloged as Messier 33 or NGC 598, and is sometimes informally referred to as the Pinwheel Galaxy, a nickname it shares with Messier 101. The Triangulum Galaxy is the third-largest member of the Local Group of galaxies, which includes the Milky Way, the Andromeda Galaxy and about 44 other smaller galaxies. It is one of the most distant permanent objects that can be viewed with the naked eye.



Messier 42 - the Orion Nebula:

Messier 42 (NGC1976) - the Orion Nebula - is one of the brightest nebulae in the night sky and, on clear nights, it is clearly visible to the naked eye. The light poking your seeingballs from this DSO has traveled roughly 1350 light years to do so. With a mass about 2000 times that of our Sun, this puppy is (give or take) 24 light years across.



Messier 45 - Pleiades:

Messier 45 – more commonly known as Pleiades or The Seven Sisters – is only about 444 light years from us… only. It is quite bright and clearly visible to the naked eye without any form of telescope or binoculars on a clear night. In Japanese, the star cluster is called Subaru… and happens to be the logo for the automotive manufacturer bearing it’s namesake. Its nine brightest stars are made up of the sisters Sterope, Merope, Electra, Maia, Taygeta, Celaeno, and Alcyone, along with their parents Atlas and Pleione.
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Looking forward to seeing y'all around the forums!

Cheers! :beer:
/c

 

[crazyspaz]

Wow. There really isn't words to describe the beauty in those pictures. Just stunning. How do you take these pictures?

 

[KapHn8d]

Wow. There really isn't words to describe the beauty in those pictures. Just stunning. How do you take these pictures?

Thanks, man! Well, for deep space objects, the CliffsNotes version is that you point a camera at the sky and take a lot of long exposures and then smash then together like you're making a Dagwood sandwich. For the moon, you just point and click.

I would be happy to elaborate on any part of the process, but the idea is to collect as much light as possible from the deep space object your are trying to photograph while keeping the stars from trailing in your field of view (from the Earth's rotation) and minimizing the amount of noise in the image (from various factors). Since the light coming from distant space is more like a drizzle than a torrential downpour, you have to leave your bucket in the rain a long time to get enough water. The idea of smashing a bunch of exposures together is analogous to putting out 50 buckets and dumping all the collections together instead of putting one bucket out for the same amount of time. You get more water... or in this case, light.

The rabbit hole goes deep in astrophotography. It is simple to understand, but complex to master... and I'm fairly new at it.

thanks!
/c

 

[crazyspaz]

Wait- you are just using a camera, not aided by a telescope? What the heck lens are you using

 

[NightExplorer96]

Wow.....simply beautiful *cries*

-Alex

 

[KapHn8d]

Wait- you are just using a camera, not aided by a telescope? What the heck lens are you using

Two of these were taken with a telephoto camera lens and two of them were taken with a telescope attached to the same camera. There is a popular misconception that you need some ridiculously large telescope to photograph something deep in space. The truth is that many objects are quite large... just relatively dim. For example, Andromeda - if it were the same relative brightness from our perspective as the moon - would be about 5 times wider across than the full moon in the night sky. We just don't see it as such because the visual magnitude of the light is so small.

Now that isn't to say there aren't some really small (from our perspective) things that do require a lot of magnification... it's just that these aren't some of them...

Wow.....simply beautiful *cries*

-Alex

Thanks!

cheers!
/c

 

[ped]

Clayton, the first, second & fifth shots? there really aren't words to describe them.
Whatever job you're in, its the wrong one, you should be doing stellar photography.

I'd appreciate it, as I'm sure others would, if you could upload links to full res versions of those photo's.

Outstanding work.

 

[crazyspaz]

Clayton, the first, second & fifth shots? there really aren't words to describe them.
Whatever job you're in, its the wrong one, you should be doing stella photography.

I'd appreciate it, as I'm sure others would, if you could upload links to full res versions of those photo's.

Outstanding work.

I second that. Those would be my desktop background for sure.

And I am sure there is some way you could make money off these....they really are THAT good!

 

[Alaskan]

Thank you for sharing, gives wonderful perspective of what is out there to see photographs like this. We live in such a wonderful universe, the depth and beauty of it is beyond our capacity to fully hold and comprehend and will always be so, awesome!

 

[Sigurthr]

I'll mirror Ped's comments.

Your photos are always so enthralling!

 

[RB astro]

The rabbit hole goes deep in astrophotography. It is simple to understand, but complex to master... and I'm fairly new at it.

thanks!
/c

Clayton nice to see you posting again.
These are pretty good, you're off to a good start.
The hole is indeed deep my friend.

Thank you for sharing, makes me want to post some of mine to.
My main hobby is astrophotography but I'm a relative noob to lasers.

RB

 

[Blarg King]

*picks jaw up*
These are top notch! I envy your ability to take these photos. I struggle to take a decent picture of the moon

To get these images, to you take on long exposure, or a bunch of short ones and then stack them afterwards?

Also, for images taken without a telescope, do you have some sort of tracking tripod that keeps your camera aimed at the object your photographing?

 

[VisibleGreen]

Makes me want to go to a planetarium now Can you show us what your camera looks like?

 

[starlight]

Easily our best photographer on this forum. Thank you for sharing and the explanations below each picture are a story in there own.

 

[spaceman]

Those pictures are stunning!

I have an 8" newtonian telescope along with a t-adapter and a fully manual Nikon camera. However, I haven't gotten around to taking any pictures as of yet.
I can't, however, do any long exposures because the telescope has no tracking.

Great job

 

[VisibleGreen]

Remember when everyone wanted to go out in space? I miss those times. How can space be boring with all of that stuff in it. There's got to be something that's faster than light speed...