Astronomy

[Illiad86]

Aw thanks Granny :D

 

My boyfriend and I can help ya pick one out Anton if you need help :)

 

Did get out last night, got a few of the Dumbbell Nebula :) We got home pretty late so my boyfriend has to process the images, so will have some up later :)

 

Was going to get some more Jupiter but the telescope was soaked from dew :( Stupid weathermen wrong as usual, humidity was rather high....was a beautiful night though. Need to figure out some way of preventing it...dew heaters are NOT cheap....*sigh* The boyfriend will probably figure something out lol...there's probably schematics floating around somewhere too haha. Either that or an observatory will have to be built :P

 

Here we go :) One of the images of the Dumbbell :) Only 3 images stacked...need to get an autoguider and we can get longer exposures and more pictures :)

 

http://i683.photobucket.com/albums/vv200/Illiana86/m273_filtered.jpg

 

Boyfriend's birthday is coming up....hmmm his mama and I were trying to decide what to get him...might be an autoguider now hehe ;)

 

Ahh...after some more processing, boyfriend got a better picture from above...7 images stacked, colour level balance in GIMP, and correct orientation of the nebula:

http://i683.photobucket.com/albums/vv200/Illiana86/m277_filtered.jpg

 

and here's the picture of Jupiter from the video above

http://i683.photobucket.com/albums/vv200/Illiana86/out_140.jpg

 

lol and here's Uranus :P

http://i683.photobucket.com/albums/vv200/Illiana86/out_145.jpg

:D lol little blue blob...it's hard to get a good picture of it unless your on top of a mountain with perfect seeing lol It's so far away and the atmosphere distorts it so much it's hard to get detail. We could get detail on our 11" but yeah...mountain lol

Edited September 27, 2010 by Illiad86

[Omeletter]

Wow, nice pics. As some of you might saw that in my Laser pointer topic I said I like astronomy. I'm really just beginning, and I don't have expensive viewing equipment. I only have an old telescope disassembled under my bed. I will have to check the model.

[Illiad86]

Ya, our stuff is kinda expensive, it's pretty cheap actually in comparison to some of the items you can buy. The style of our mount (equatorial) is preferred over other styles to take pictures...but it's considered a cheap one lol...$1400 aint cheap :P This crazy one (CGE Pro, we have the CGEM) is $5,000! :wallbash: That's for just the mount...lol but I've seen mounts that cost $10,000 or more :blink: *sigh* lol seems like no matter what hobby you have, it's fricking expensive....especially when you want to take photos. Ya need the good mount, good OTA, autoguider, DSLR (cheap actually lol) or an astronomy camera (omfg wtf expensive for old technology and it can't even take regular pictures).

 

The boyfriend jerry rigged up a $30 webcam to a film canister and hooked it up to his finderscope....all we have to get is this little cable and it can be used as an autoguider :D Say, you are looking at the Orion Nebula. The autoguider is hooked up to the telescope (that's the cable we need) and locks onto a star in the nebula (with this computer software). It tells the mount to stay on that star. Doing that, you can take very long exposures with your DSLR and the stars wont trail. You can't lock onto a single star with the mount by itself, it just tracks the whole nebula based on location, time, date...it's accurate, but for pictures it's not accurate enough. The software tells the mount to stay on that star and it moves the mount accordingly. Pretty cool stuff lol....you can set it up like that and go watch a movie while it's taking pictures :D

 

Ah cool, please tell me what you have :) Might not be able to take pictures, but you can see quite a lot even with a little telescope :)

Edited September 28, 2010 by Illiad86

[CommanderCrazy]

Mine is an Azimuth mount. :whistling:

[Illiad86]

hahah :P But you get to see such wonderful things in the southern hemisphere ;)

[antonkr]

Ive changed my mind. This costs too much :tongue:

[Illiad86]

lol :P Depends on what you want to do. You can get a computerized mount with a nice OTA (Optical Tube Assembly...the scope) for $250-350 :) Just don't go and get one of those piles of garbage from a hobby store or Toys R Us :P (most of them are just crap, rarely do you find a nice one) If you wanna look at the planets/moon, that's easy, you don't need a big scope for those. When it comes to seeing nebulas, galaxies, that's when you need a biggun like ours :P If you want to do astrophotography like we do...haha then we talking expensive...just observing is quite cheap. Eyepieces are decently priced, really depends on what you want to buy. There are different types, different quality, etc. We can help you out :)

 

Anyone that's interested in astronomy should really join this forum. Everyone is super awesome on there and you get to see their wonderful pictures...you think ours are great...see these guys lol. They are much more experienced than us, we've learned a lot from them :) http://www.telescopejunkies.com/category-view.asp

 

Went out this afternoon and did some solar observing :) Bit windy today, but we got a nice image of some sunspots

 

http://i683.photobucket.com/albums/vv200/Illiana86/out_151193.jpg

 

The film we have shows it in white light, boyfriend added the orange colour...lines on the bottom there are from the stacking program.

 

Can't wait until the Sun is more active...those are the only spots on it right now.

Edited September 30, 2010 by Illiad86

[antonkr]

lol :P Depends on what you want to do. You can get a computerized mount with a nice OTA (Optical Tube Assembly...the scope) for $250-350 :) Just don't go and get one of those piles of garbage from a hobby store or Toys R Us :P (most of them are just crap, rarely do you find a nice one) If you wanna look at the planets/moon, that's easy, you don't need a big scope for those. When it comes to seeing nebulas, galaxies, that's when you need a biggun like ours :P If you want to do astrophotography like we do...haha then we talking expensive...just observing is quite cheap. Eyepieces are decently priced, really depends on what you want to buy. There are different types, different quality, etc. We can help you out :)

 

Anyone that's interested in astronomy should really join this forum. Everyone is super awesome on there and you get to see their wonderful pictures...you think ours are great...see these guys lol. They are much more experienced than us, we've learned a lot from them :) http://www.telescopejunkies.com/category-view.asp

 

Went out this afternoon and did some solar observing :) Bit windy today, but we got a nice image of some sunspots

 

http://i683.photobucket.com/albums/vv200/Illiana86/out_151193.jpg

 

The film we have shows it in white light, boyfriend added the orange colour...lines on the bottom there are from the stacking program.

 

Can't wait until the Sun is more active...those are the only spots on it right now.

Any chance of getting a decent scope for less then 400? :rolleyes:

[CommanderCrazy]

"that's when you need a biggun like ours"

 

Or mine. Mine is good..... But you're right. I can see some excellent things over here. I would post pictures, but I got none.

Its a good night tonight. Might go have a look. :thumbsup:

[Illiad86]

Hehe :) You got the CPC 1100 right? You have the same tube as ours, just on the CPC mount :) Man you gotta get stuff to take pictures...stuff is so awesome down there I'm jealous :P

 

Ya Anton, you could get one for that :)

 

Holy crap, this one is on sale here...normally you would pay that for the mount and tube!

 

http://www.astronomics.com/main/product.asp/catalog_name/Astronomics/category_name/8X1224WVKK858PCCCVFC5GLWE0/product_id/K90MAKGT

 

comes with a few eyepieces and filters...awesome deal! Normally $400-500

 

or this one, it's pretty nice :)

http://www.astronomics.com/main/product.asp/catalog_name/Astronomics/category_name/DXT4VFP8J2JJ8N2JCGQ765JME6/product_id/DS2130AT

 

problem with that one is collimation...it's a pain in the arse on Newtonian. On the other one there, it does not need collimation....optics are cemented into the tube, so no hassle :)

 

Hmm looks like a good night...supposed to be clear, low winds :D Might be out :) Can't wait until Orion is back up, that was the first thing we took pictures of...now we have more experience ;) So we should be able to get a really awesome one now :D

 

Ah forgot the boyfriend even finished this, here's a mosaic of the whole Sun :)

http://i683.photobucket.com/albums/vv200/Illiana86/sun.jpg

Edited September 30, 2010 by Illiad86