I’m amazed you could get those images from West Roxbury. Whenever I look up in the sky around here (Waltham), it always seems terribly hazy as well as incredibly light-polluted. Even with a filter, this is pretty damn good. How frequently are you able to take such pictures?
By the way, jpinard, some of this is sorta visible with the naked eye, and the big nebulas are definitely viewable with ordinary binoculars, especially if you are in a true dark-sky setting.
M31 usually shows up pretty well in the summer.
You can see some without any aids at all. The Orion nebula is visible as Orion’s sword, and even I can see that with my light pollution, though it helps that I know what I’m looking for.
On the other hand, you’ll never see color under any skies. The objects are too dim for color vision.
Yeah, weather conditions are a serious problem. Leaving aside cloud cover, it’s rare we get better than 3/5 seeing. I only manage a few times a year, typically. I could do a bit more, but it’s an exhaustive all-night process, and some nights I’m just not prepared for the effort involved. The prep work is generally a couple of hours, between star alignment, drift alignment, framing and focusing.
Not around here. I have trouble seeing it even with the 8" scope. You really need mag 5.5 skies or better, which around here means at least 40 miles out from the city center. I’m more like 5-6.
That said, convenience is a big factor in imaging, since the weather is a serious issue and unpredictable. I’m simply never going to image 40-80 miles from home because the effort is so much greater than just setting up on my driveway.
Very, very nice, Gus. Atlas mount, yeah? I’ve heard about them a fair bit, but never used one. How’s the tracking?
Seeing those awesome photos is giving me a bit of impetus to get a camera like I’ve been telling myself to do for a long time. I’ve been strictly visual so far.
Yeah, it’s an Atlas EQ-G. It’s more-or-less the cheapest mount that’s stable enough for photography. I got a bit lucky in my mount selection since it has the EQMOD third-party adapter and open-source mount control software available. The pointing code in the EQMOD software is much better than the handset, probably as good as anything out there short of MaxPoint. Being able to point at dim objects with planetarium software (also free) has made my life much easier as well.
Prior to getting an autoguider, I managed some 2 minute subs with the Atlas, though honestly I recommend autoguiding to any imager at this point. There are some definite bumps in the worm gear, but the autoguider usually manages to compensate. I usually balance East-heavy to try and make gear bumps less of an issue. Some nights it’s good, some nights it’s bad, but since it’s not consistently bad, the bad nights are probably wind and atmospheric effects.
Be warned, imaging can be very frustrating compared to visual observing. I got pushed over the edge myself, and there was a hiatus in of about a year (mid 2007 to 2008) when I almost gave up on it entirely. If you do take the plunge, start with planetary nebulae, like M57. They’re tiny, but they have very high surface brightness, which makes them much easier to image than something like M33.
The only thing I can see from my backyard is MS-13.
East Boston eh?
I was Fox News’ing my comment about Jupiter a bit, I can see many of the bright stars from my yard, and Jupiter clearly. Jupiter has been hanging out about halfway up the sky over my grill on my back porch for several weeks now. Sometimes I think he’s moving then I realize that’s a plane taking off from Logan.
Still, whenever I get up to Vermont or Maine (which is not often enough) I make it a point to go outside and stare at the milky way on a clear night. It’s absolutely stunning, and people who grew up in/around cities have probably never seen it.
Seriously, seeing that and thinking about the vastness of space and all the possibilities and wonders out there makes me emotional. It’s overwhelming.
Out of curiosity, how much does your equipment run for? I’ve always wanted to do something like that, but the big problem being 1. cost and 2. getting out of the city and all of its dirty light pollution.
The International Dark Sky Association has a saying that our children should not grow up thinking the milky way is a candy bar.
Fabulous pictures, amazing what you can do in a light polluted area with a small scope. Myself, I dabbled about 15 yrs ago in astrophotography (film), but came to the realization that I could look at pictures that other people took and instead focused on seeing things with my eye.
Imagine that a photon of light has been travelling for millions of years and it stops on your eyeball. Amateur Astronomy is one of the few pursuits where the amateurs have access to the original objects that professionals have.
If anyone here is interested, I strongly suggest as an entry level, a 8 or 10" dobsonian. They are fairly inexpensive and easy to set up and use. Better yet, a good pair of binoculars. See if you like spending hours in the fridgid cold before commiting to a complete setup. You can always upgrade later as the real expense is in books and lenses.
Second the binoculars. Until you get into Gus’s league, the most fun things to look at can be seen at low magnification anyway.
Absolutely incredible, Gus. I love the clarity and am now trying to decide which I want as desktop wallpapers. The setup is more complicated and precise than I imagined.
I seriously underestimated the costs when I started. The telescope and mount run about $1600 together, but all the other stuff adds up.
Realistically, the minimum is about $3500, including the cost of a DSLR, but assuming you already own a laptop. Going to a cooled CCD camera would bring that up to $4500. Adding what you need for wide-field photographs adds another $1000.
A more detailed breakdown:
The mount is $1300 from Orion.
My primary telescope is $310 from Orion. I’d probably go for something slightly better if I were to start over.
I very strongly recommend a motorized focuser. Precision focus is critical. An aftermarket focuser can also been lower profile than stock, which is important because in-travel limits are a serious issue with Newtonians. Mine is a MoonLite with the basic motor, which runs $315. Yes, the focuser is more expensive than the telescope!
Focus has become much easier with the advent of Bahtinov focus masks. For a while getting one precision cut out of plastic or metal was pricey, but I see there’s a seller on Amazon carrying them for about $20 now.
The two eyepieces I use every night without fail are a 12.5mm illuminated reticle eyepiece ($75) and a 1rpd 30mm ST80 ($70 from 1rpd as ResearchAgent on eBay). Orion’s 32mm or 38mm Q70 eyepieces are $100, and serve much the same purpose. You can easily spend several hundred dollars on additional eyepieces for visual observation, and that’s sticking with the cheap stuff.
A Baader Coma Corrector is $170. Telescopes in general tend to distort stars near the edge of the field. That’s fine for visual observation, but noticeable in photographs. With Newtonians you want a coma corrector for this.
A 2" Hutech LPS P2 filter is $190. You have to be careful with choosing a light pollution filter, some really don’t help that much, particularly ones meant for visual astronomy. Orion’s 2nd version of the Skyglow 2" is $170 and is supposed to be roughly as good as the Hutech. I haven’t used it.
Narrowband isn’t where you’re going to start, but the 2" 7nm Baader hydrogen alpha filter was $280 from Oceanside Photo & Telescope. Ha is fantastic under light-polluted skies, it’s like being at a dark site. There’s a learning curve, though, aiming and focusing can be difficult because a Ha filter cuts out almost all of the light.
If you’re just starting, a used Canon DSLR is can be ~$450 or so. Canon’s really the only choice in astrophotography, it’s much better supported by the amateur community, and doesn’t have Nikon’s issues with forced noise reduction in RAW mode for long exposures. However, a stock DSLR has two major problems: it has an infrared filter the blocks much of the red light you want, and thermal noise as the sensor heats up during repeated long exposures is a real problem. That said, you can do a lot with one, the Orion photo is with a stock 40D.
My QHY8 is a cooled camera built around an older DSLR sensor. It’s a tiny market, so there can be long delays in purchasing one. Starizona sells it for $1500.
A DSLR will need a suitable adapter (T-ring or straight EOS to 2" adapter), the QHY8 needs additional spacer rings. That adds about $50.
Drift alignment is much easier with a modified webcam and software. Mine is pretty old and not made anymore; I’m not really clear on possible replacements right now. You can get a purpose-built camera for $100 or so (i.e. the Celestron NexImage), but that’s really more expensive than it needs to be.
A USB2EQ6 EQMOD cable is $41 from Shoestring Astronomy. If you’re going to have a laptop out there for autoguiding, I highly recommend using an EQMOD cable and the open-source software to control your mount.
Shoestring also sells the USB controller I use for the focus motor for $80. This is convenient, but optional.
A Starshoot Autoguider is $280. Orion sells a bundle with a ShortTube 80 (400mm f/5), guider, rail, and rings for $400, which essentially means you get the rail and rings for free.
I use an Orion 0.5x focal reducer with the guider ($45). This improves the brightness of the stars and the field of view. The stars are smaller, but guidance still works.
The ST80 is fine as a guide scope, but it’s unsuitable for using as an imaging telescope while using your main scope for guidance. The problem is a $100 telescope has terrible color correction. A good 80mm apochromatic refractor like mine will run around $700 new. 80mm APOs are popular, so there are a lot of choices in this field.
I bought my motor for the focuser on the secondary, widefield telescope from JMI. They’ve got a million variants based on telescope brand, but they’re all $170.
Like the main scope, the widefield scope needs a corrector, a field flattener in this case. The Asto-tech field flattener I’m using is $150 from Astronomics. With a f/7.5 scope, you may want a focal reducer / flattener to reduce focal length and improve f/ratio, which can run $250-$300.
No shit? I just assumed pictures like yours weren’t possible close to lights.
I now have a ton of Christmas wish list items!
Photography has advantages. Your brain can’t subtract light from an image you are seeing, but you can subtract a known, fixed background level of light from a photograph to reveal the object. For example, in the IC 1499 RGB images, if you look at the luminance values, they range between about 2500 and 3100. That’s a tiny variation to the eye, but subtract 2500, and you get a 0 to 600 range, and that’s the nebula.
Unfortunately, the light pollution also contributes a random component. That’s why a hydrogen alpha capture, which has essentially no light pollution, shows far more detail than a RGB frame with the fixed part of the light pollution subtracted.
You can overcome noise with enough exposure time, but each low-noise Ha frame is worth about 10x that of a light-polluted RGB frame in terms of improving image quality, since they contribute so much less noise. Of course it’s only monochrome deep red, so it’s only really helpful with objects that are mostly hydrogen.
Those pictures are just insane Gus. I’m awe-struck.
And how do you know where to point them, or do you just sit in a chair outside and peer about?
This is coming from someone who couldn’t tell you the constellations and all that. I can point out the moon though.
That’s no moon…
Just loaded up Google Sky Map. Found the big star I was looking at was actually Uranus. Pointed my binoculars at it, and it just looked like a slightly bigger star. Got my DSLR out and pointed it at Uranus. Again, just looked like a star (200mm lens on a 1.5x crop body.) I’d need a release cable to get the time right, as the camera can’t figure it out on it’s own. Still, I was decidely underwhelmed. Oh well.
You can’t see Uranus as a disk without an enormous telescope. Next time look at Venus with your binoculars. Even Mars will require fairly high magnification to see the disk, not just a random pair of binoculars. The moon is always good though…
Planetarium software can be really helpful for this. I use WinStars 2, it’s free (if a little dated at this point), and it does telescope control, which I find really helpful.