Space and Other Non-laser Distractions...

[KapHn8d]

Thanks for all the kudos, folks. If this sort of thing interests you, there are a ton of online resources to help you get started. Photography has been a hobby of mine for some time, but I'm still very new to the genre of astro-imaging.

I don't have high-res versions of these hosted at the moment other than a rework of M45 I sent to a friend for constructive feedback on some noise reduction I tried. Feel free to download it here while it's up if you are interested.

Easily our best photographer on this forum

I'm pretty sure Bruce owns the market on laser photography...

Can you show us what your camera looks like?

It is a Canon DSLR... nothing special.

do you have some sort of tracking tripod that keeps your camera aimed at the object your photographing?

Yes, the type of mount used in most deep space astrophotography is called an equatorial mount (sometimes GEM is used as an abbreviation - stands for German Equatorial Mount). These mounts move on the axis of right ascension and declination instead of your more familiar up-down-right-left movement of an alt-azimuth mount used for visual astronomy.

makes me want to post some of mine to

Do it! Do it! I'd love to see your images.

Cheers!
/c

edit: apparently you have to click the "download" link in dropbox to get the bigger version

 

[Bionic-Badger]

Wow, I thought those were just some pictures you grabbed from Google or something! They're really good quality, especially from a terrestrial setup and not from a big telescope.

Do you use some sort of cooling on your camera sensor to reduce noise? I saw some rigs that people had where they built an insulated box around the back of their DSLR with some dry ice or something to reduce the noise during long exposures.

 

[KapHn8d]

Do you use some sort of cooling on your camera sensor to reduce noise?

Thank you for the kind words!

I use a stock/unmodified DSLR, so there is no cooling. Noise is a big issue for me... especially since I live in the southern states where the weather is predominately warmer. I mitigate some of the noise with shorter exposures (most of the time 3 minutes or less) and compensate with more of them... but the rest must be dealt with in the post processing. Clearly you can see from the images that my Fu is not yet powerful enough to get rid of it entirely.

I have a plan/goal to purchase a set-point cooled CCD... however, much like with a special laser purchase, it fluctuates in the priority list with other life expenses. Having a sensor that is cooled to 20+ degrees below ambient will eliminate much of the noise I am dealing with now.

cheers,
Clayton