First Moon Scope Shots - The begining of a new addiction

[Hewie]

Gday All,

I just wanted to share a couple of shots a mate and I got last night.

We went and visited an astronomy club who kindly lent us a 8" Dob Telescope to play with and as this was completely the first time we had used a scope thats pretty much all we did ... muck around.

Anyway

We managed to snag a couple of images use the scope.

It was a fixed 1200mm @ f4 ... I was using a 5d2 on it.

First at 1200mm

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3044/3255057043_97b3f6b5cf.jpg?v=0

Then we thought .... "wonder if we can make a 2x extender work" .. well after a bit of mucking around with some gaffa tape ... we managed to get the scope out to 4800mm (we had to blank out the contacts to get the camera to fire)

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3443/3255057045_356d718e4c.jpg?v=0

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3465/3255057051_92d9bf08bd.jpg?v=0

And then things kind went down hill a bit ..... we cobbled all the extenders together that we had and end up at a meager 10752 mm :shock:

By this stage a wind had picked up and the scope and stand went really up to holding up the weight of the camera + grip + 4 extenders ... so it kept dropping and moving.

But we managed to get a coupleof images at that range

http://www.perthstreetbikes.com/25701/Just-checking-out-the-foot-prints-on-the-moon/IMG_4830e-sml.jpg

I know its not the best image ... but god it was fun to get.

Anyway .... now im hooked. Ive decided to get a Skywatcher Mak as a starting scope just so I can do Planetary stuff to start with.

Anyway .... C+C very welcome as Im still very very very new to this.

Cheers

H

[Adrena1in]

Wow, you managed some great shots there. My biggest scope is a 1200mm, but it's only a 5" lens, so makes it f/9.5. I've loved mucking around with it, adding Barlows and trying lens-projection, and the most I've got to is effectively around 14000mm, but the quality is pants by then...with that Dobsonian you were still getting quality images at 10000mm+, so well done there.

I find it very interesting what you said about putting gaffa tape over the contacts to get the camera to fire. Was it giving errors otherwise? I've heard that teleconverters give a better result than barlows, so I got one, but it won't work. My camera reports an error when I put the 2x TC between my camera and scope. I'm not wanting any IS or AF or anything like that, so I was hoping that it would just shoot, regardless, but it doesn't. But if I blank the connectors the I guess it should fool the camera into thinking it's just an adapter it's got plugged into it. I'll give it a try...

[Hewie]

Wow, you managed some great shots there. My biggest scope is a 1200mm, but it's only a 5" lens, so makes it f/9.5. I've loved mucking around with it, adding Barlows and trying lens-projection, and the most I've got to is effectively around 14000mm, but the quality is pants by then...with that Dobsonian you were still getting quality images at 10000mm+, so well done there.

I find it very interesting what you said about putting gaffa tape over the contacts to get the camera to fire. Was it giving errors otherwise? I've heard that teleconverters give a better result than barlows, so I got one, but it won't work. My camera reports an error when I put the 2x TC between my camera and scope. I'm not wanting any IS or AF or anything like that, so I was hoping that it would just shoot, regardless, but it doesn't. But if I blank the connectors the I guess it should fool the camera into thinking it's just an adapter it's got plugged into it. I'll give it a try...

Cheers. We would have gone further but ran out of extenders :) 14000 is awesome

Yeah the cameras kept throwing a lens error. We eventually worked out that we had to cover two of the contacts to get it to work.

When you look at the camera end of the extender you will notice that on the right hand end of the contacts there is a longer contact that bridges two pins from the camera and then a final contact. It was the bridged contact and the final one that we covered.

We only had a bit of gaffa tape with us .. but it worked fine.

Ill post a pic of the contacts later.

I was thinking about getting a cheaper extender and actually removing that contact altogether .. it would only work on scopes then ... but that wouldnt matter.

[Adrena1in]

Thanks again, I will definitely give that a try. This TC Cost me £50, and I was going to get another in case the TC was faulty. I mean, I used it with my 50mm f/1.8, and though it worked, the AF wouldn't lock onto anything. It won't work with my other lenses, but I only got it for using with my scopes. If I DO win the other one, (eBay), then I'll have two. Theoretically, with two 2x TCs, a 2X Barlow, a 3x Barlow, and a 5mm eyepiece, I would be able to get something like 100,000mm! Wouldn't work of course, but that's quite funny.

[Hewie]

No problems at all.

I found that I had issues with my AF when I was shooting with the TC on a 100-400 @ 400 to do birds etc.

Apparently the AF cuts out after f8 or above ... Im not 100% sure but this does appear to be the case on my lenses.

[Hewie]

These ones

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/Hewie/2xTC.jpg

[Adrena1in]

Cool, thanks.

I heard the TC needs a wider aperture than f/4, so assumed my f/1.8 would be fine. The focus just racks back and forth very rapidly, never fixing on anything...I'm sure it's not good for it.

(Kind of hoping I do now win that other 2x TC I'm bidding on. 4800mm would be a good moon-scope. And my 2x Barlow is a 2" one, which will let much more light in than my 3x Barlow, which is a 1.25", so that 2" Barlow will take it to 9600mm. No doubt I'll get loads of fuzziness and CA though.)

[JRB]

Hey I think I see the American flag there in that last pic! ;o)

[Hewie]

Lol ... we wanted foot prints :D

And heres tonights effort.

My first Lunar stack

This is a image stack taken over about an hour. Very little PP. Just the stack merge and tidy up. The additional depth the stack give the image is fantastic considering its only about a dozen images.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3519/3257523277_bc354a8164.jpg?v=0

Have to try a 50 - 100 image stack next.

[JRB]

Very nice mate!

[dcad10]

sounds like fun! I need to go out as soon as it warms up a bit!

[ssracer]

Very nice shots! My scope is only a 900mm with at 3" lens, so mine is like f/11. I need to try this image stacking thing.

[perry314181]

This is a image stack taken over about an hour. Very little PP. Just the stack merge and tidy up. The additional depth the stack give the image is fantastic considering its only about a dozen images.

Very nice !!! What did you use for image stacking ? And how did you make sure all of them align ? :)

[Zonieart]

Beautiful shots!

[lsuber]

Great shots of the moon!

[Adrena1in]

Cracking shot, that last one. Only small on my screen, but amazing sharpness.

[Hewie]

Cheers all.

Im pretty happy with how it came out for my first attempt. Ive been told I should get an IR filter ? to increase the level of visible detail ? Im not sure how that works yet, but Ill give it a try.

The amount of additional detail you get from the stack is amazing.

Very nice !!! What did you use for image stacking ? And how did you make sure all of them align ? :)

I just using the same 2 step PP I do on all my images. (well except for the stack :) )

First I load all my images into DXO and do all my RAW corrections there. I have found the DXO is better at managing RAW than Photoshop. Its lens correction capability seem to far exceed PS.

I then save all the images to TIFF and then use CS4 for the stack.

So far I just use the SCRIPT>LOAD TO STACK function in CS4. It does a pretty good job of getting the images aligned.

Then I just touch it up, crop it and its done.

Im sure theres probably a better way (hopefully someone can give me some hints).

Cheers

H