You don't need a telescope

Here are a few from tonight - getting used to my new tripod and X-S1 on it, i had to shoot as long as the cam woul do 2 seconds as i dont think it has a Bulb setting(got to read up the manual:oops i set the cam at its widest zoom and near wide open and on the 10 second timmer, the first two were just wide angle strait up shots just a lot of stars really, and the third one was a moon shot with Jupiter that was close bye, the problem i had there was balancing the light the moon doesn't need agains the light that jupiter does, kind off blown the moon out a bit

P.

The moon and jupiter shot

P.

Celestron wrote in post #17972638
If you edit a full moon image correctly you can see all kinds if craters that you can't see with a half moon so to speak . Actually is the biggest misconception taken by all people who look at the moon . When we see supposedly a Full Moon your only seeing half the moon and that's the side that faces earth . When we supposedly see Half a Moon your actually only seeing a quarter moon because half you don't see on the back side and only half of the front side actually makes that a quarter moon . Now you can tell people who don't understand what an actual quarter moon really is .

http://apod.nasa.gov …FullMoon2012083​0smith.jpg

I've studied the moon quite a bit and can tell the time just by looking at the moon. Eventually you get used to seeing it in a spot and with a shape, but it starts with visualizing the moon pointing at the sun. You the half that's lit is pointing at the Sun, so you think of where the Sun is, and then what time of day that would be. You get quite close if you do it right, within 10-15 minutes.

TCampbell wrote in post #17974886
That's a nice image -- just a little long on the exposure time. Notice that the stars around the edges of the frame are all swirling toward a point roughly located in the right lower third of the frame (that's the location of the south celestial pole.) The farther the star is from that pole, the faster it seem to move (and hence the longer the star-trail in the image.)

Stars appear to move at about 15 arc-seconds per second at the equator (a star with declination 0º appears to travel directly above Earth's equator). But a star located precisely at the celestial pole will not appear to move at all -- it will remain stationary. The apparent angular rate of movement is found by multiplying the speed of Earth's rotation (15 arc seconds per second) by the cosine of the star's declination. You used a 28mm lens on an APS-C camera. That gives you a 54º range when measured diagonal (corner to corner). Had the south celestial pole been centered then that would mean the stars are 27º away from center at the corners but in your image let's eyeball it at a 2/3 : 1/3 split. That puts the upper left corner at about 36º away from the celestial pole and the lower right corner is roughly 18º from the pole.

That makes the stars in the upper left located at roughly declination 90-36 = 54º. The cosine of 54º is about .59 (rounded). That means your will appear to be moving at about .59 x 15 arc-secs/sec or only about 8.85 arc-seconds per sec.

That means you can "cheat" on the exposure time... but only by the margin equal to the apparent change in speed.

For your camera and lens combination, normally you'd want to keep the exposure time at 400 ÷ 28 = 14 seconds. If we divide that by .59 we get about 24 seconds (so you gain about 10 seconds because you are shooting a region closer to the pole.)

Your image just says "bulb" so we don't know how long you used for exposure, but I think if you re-shoot and keep the exposure to 24 seconds you *should* avoid any star trails in the image.

cheers for the information, always good to get constructive C & C,

From last night... Moon and Jupiter:

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/GeE6​DJ

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/GnPg​dk

I spent last night/Evening with my head in the sky - i got my X-S1 set up on my New tripod and captured these images - manily just of the moon at different stages of the evening and Jupiter, because of the excitement of using a tripod i did not set the cam up to its best exposures and just left it on A mode, hence why all of the Jupiter shots are over even though i tried using spot metering but i guess it was to small to make a difference.
Anyway there is a fair few pics i hope you dont get bored and enjoy them.

P.

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/FvkS​rR

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/FvkR​uR

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/GojK​7u

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/GojJ​ku

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/GojH​mA

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/FvkM​mk

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/FvkL​Zi

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/GjM6​D8

I thought i might have had some comments on my pics folks, i dont think they are bad considering the equipment? but any advice with my bridge camera would be great


P.

Mostly just testing my new Kenko 1.4x TC with my Tamron 150-600mm lens. Taken early morning of April 22, 2016. All were at different exposures and cropped different amounts to enlarge them.

Roy A. Rust wrote in post #17981010
Mostly just testing my new Kenko 1.4x TC with my Tamron 150-600mm lens. Taken early morning of April 22, 2016. All were at different exposures and cropped different amounts to enlarge them.

Hosted photo: posted by Roy A. Rust in
./showthread.php?p=179​81010&i=i136859206
forum: Astronomy & Celestial

Those are great i love the detail in them, i struggled to nail the exposure with mine and getting the dof even after manual focus locked on the moon.


P.

Pagman wrote in post #17981073
Those are great i love the detail in them, i struggled to nail the exposure with mine and getting the dof even after manual focus locked on the moon.

P.

I seldom 'nail the exposure' with one image. If I'm planning on taking a single exposure of a bright object, like the Moon or Jupiter, I usually start a little dark and keep increasing the exposure as I take more photos until they look almost too bright... then decide on the best after loading it onto my computer. That's the beauty of digital cameras... you can take as many photos as you want, and then just delete the bad or marginal ones... or all of them if none are any good. The only thing it costs you is having to recharge the batteries. Nothing like the 'good old days' when you had to wait to see if any were any good, and pay for film and developing - even if they were all bad.

If you're planning on stacking an image of star fields or a nebula, each separate image can appear to be too dark, and stacking them, followed by post-processing will reveal a LOT of detail that's impossible to see in a single exposure. Stacking them also allows for shorter exposures, which reduces star trails that might happen on a single, long exposure. You can take those kind with a standard tripod by moving the camera after two or three exposures to keep the main subject in the field. Stacking will register the stars in each image to 'build up' the exposure.

You don't have to worry about depth of field with astronomical photos.. everything is at infinity. It might help to focus with the lens wide open and stop it down for the exposure if you're concerned that it might be slightly out of focus, but if you get it properly focused on a dim star, everything in the night sky will be in focus. I said 'dim star' because if a dim star is slightly out of focus, it won't show up at all. You can only see it in your live view if it's in focus. I don't know if your camera has 'live-view' to help with focusing, but it makes a world of difference. That's one of the reasons I bought the Nikon D5200 - it has a fully articulated screen with live view, so even if the subject is straight up, I can tilt the screen to see what I'm doing. I don't have to stand on my head or twist it off trying to see through the view finder.

Hang in there. The only way to reach your goal is to practice, and keep trying to make each one a little better.

Roy A. Rust wrote in post #17981010
Mostly just testing my new Kenko 1.4x TC with my Tamron 150-600mm lens. Taken early morning of April 22, 2016. All were at different exposures and cropped different amounts to enlarge them.

Hosted photo: posted by Roy A. Rust in
./showthread.php?p=179​81010&i=i136859206
forum: Astronomy & Celestial

Roy,

You always do a fantastic job! What ISO, Shutter and f/stop did you use on Jupiter?

My image just above I used ISO 400 1/500 at f/6.3 but on my photo Jupiter's moons are not visible......

And your pic of Saturn!! Outstanding!!!!!!

Actually they are all great

Thank you. I'll check for the details on all of the photos and let you know all of the exposure info, and as much about the post processing as I can. Back later.... maybe tomorrow. I'm beginning to think it's past my bedtime.

Later: Oh, well, sleep is overrated, anyway...... I had to check the originals to get the exposure information, so I just compiled another group of images with the data on them. I don't think anyone can get the moons of Jupiter and the cloud bands in the same image with ordinary lenses. There is just too much difference in the exposure requirements. Both can be imaged with telescopes, but I THINK it requires fairly large apertures to capture both at the same time. Maybe Tim can explain all that - he seems to enjoy working out the technical requirements for this sort of thing. I just keep plugging away until it looks right to me.

The reason these are larger than the original posting is that with the moon in the original, I had to reduce the overall size of the composite to fit the requirements for posting. I just compressed these three more horizontally to limit the width, and it fit without reducing it. The Kenko 1.4x TC reduces the wide-open aperture to f:9.0, so these were all taken with the aperture wide open.

Roy A. Rust wrote in post #17981689
Thank you. I'll check for the details on all of the photos and let you know all of the exposure info, and as much about the post processing as I can. Back later.... maybe tomorrow. I'm beginning to think it's past my bedtime.

Later: Oh, well, sleep is overrated, anyway...... I had to check the originals to get the exposure information, so I just compiled another group of images with the data on them. I don't think anyone can get the moons of Jupiter and the cloud bands in the same image with ordinary lenses. There is just too much difference in the exposure requirements. Both can be imaged with telescopes, but I THINK it requires fairly large apertures to capture both at the same time. Maybe Tim can explain all that - he seems to enjoy working out the technical requirements for this sort of thing. I just keep plugging away until it looks right to me.

The reason these are larger than the original posting is that with the moon in the original, I had to reduce the overall size of the composite to fit the requirements for posting. I just compressed these three more horizontally to limit the width, and it fit without reducing it. The Kenko 1.4x TC reduces the wide-open aperture to f:9.0, so these were all taken with the aperture wide open.

Hosted photo: posted by Roy A. Rust in
./showthread.php?p=179​81689&i=i43640578
forum: Astronomy & Celestial

Thank you Roy!

For the "plugging away" you do, you do a mighty fine job

Oh, I copied this photo and printed it off for future reference

I have Photoshop Elements; currently V. 11 and 13. When you say you added or darkened with Gamma, is that something I could do in Elements?

You can adjust Gama , just find your Adjust Exposure edit and do so from there.

Inspeqtor wrote in post #17981869
Thank you Roy!

For the "plugging away" you do, you do a mighty fine job

Oh, I copied this photo and printed it off for future reference

I have Photoshop Elements; currently V. 11 and 13. When you say you added or darkened with Gamma, is that something I could do in Elements?

Thank you, again. I think you printing it is the ultimate compliment. Photos are pretty useless if they aren't shared, and I like to share mine... hate to have them just sit on my computer.
I don't have Elements. I do nearly all of my editing on Irfanview, since I can't load any of my versions of Photoshop onto my new computer - they aren't compatible with Windows 10! I LOVE Irfanview and recommend it to everyone - and it's FREE!