Lunar than later…
Posted by admin | Filed under Lunar, Planetary
Last night my Dad, my friend Luke (equipped with his sweet camera) and I drove out into the country a little ways to try to get some good shots of the moon. We arrived at the dark site and clouds were immediately a problem. There were some breaks and we managed to shoot a few good shots (out of lots and lots of trys). We did this the old fashioned way by simply holding the camera up to the eyepiece, trying to line up 3 layers of optics and taking the shot!
Here are some of the better shots we ended up with. You can really see the cloudy haze around the outside of the moon in these.
This was shot using a Zhumell 30mm Wide Field eyepiece.
After the clouds overtook the moon we thought we would point the scope in the direction of Saturn for some experimental planetary photography. This is a little blurry, but I think it’s really cool!
This was shot using a 2x Barlowed 9mm eyepiece (4.5mm).
That’s pretty cool! No doubt about the rings on Saturn. I’ve color corrected this a little bit so it matches what we see through the eyepiece. I am not sure how we could get a better picture of Saturn with my current gear. Maybe a tripod, but even then there is very little light passing through three (2x Barlow, 9mm eyepiece, and camera lens) layers of glass so this might be as “in focus” as we are going to get.
We had a lot of fun trying to get these pictures. It’s very challenging and requires lots of patience. Nice work Luke!
It was also great to use this new site. It’s far enough away from the town lights to be considered dark and is situated way up on top of a hill with a nice 365 degree view of the sky, with the Buffalo Creek close by. There is even a picnic table for laying out gear and star charts. Can’t wait to head back out there on a crystal clear moon-less night. The Milky Way will explode with stars.
May 20th, 2010 at 6:41 pm
Great post their sir John. Your a pretty good story teller slash writer! Can’t wait for the explosion of Milky Way galaxies.
May 21st, 2010 at 2:52 am
Thank *YOU* for coming out and getting these great shots! Looking forward to more…
May 21st, 2010 at 12:19 pm
“Lunar than Later,” I get it! Great photos, when it is not so cold you can more easily pay attention.