Venus and Moon rising?!

Damokc

Did anyone get any shots like this or can we in ireland? It says here that the crescent will become more solid later in the month.
http://www.astronet.ru/db/xware/msg/1234500

Gregor Samsa

That image was taken using a 5 inch telescope. He talks about it here (and there's a picture of his setup): http://www.davidcortner.com/astro/vmoon/index.htm

It should be possible to get a shot like this in Ireland if you had the telescope and everything fell into place for you (the moon phase, Venus's phase, weather and atmospheric conditions, location away from light pollution, etc.). But it would also require well calibrated equipment, and good technique.

That's a very cool shot though. I really wouldn't fancy my chances!

I tried taking Venus last weekend with my Sony A77 attached to a telescope, but the scope isn't properly collimated, so I wasn't only getting a hint of the crescent shape of Venus. I spent hours trying to align the mirrors correctly, it's nearly there, and good enough for the moon, but haven't quite got it yet for the smaller objects.

Damokc

I can get fairly good shots of the moon alright and I only use a Pentax Bridge camera with a x26 superzoom. Would love to get a telescope for shots like this.

Mountainsandh

Saw this and thought of your thread Damokc.
http://astronomy.ie/supermoon.php

Fingers crossed for some clear skies, I fancy a photo drive out at night now.

Gregor Samsa

Here's the Moon from the weekend. Both are resizes of the full frame (not crops). I have the camera body (Sony A77) mounted onto the eyepiece of the telescope (with aT-ring adapter). The eyepiece is a Celestron 8 to 24mm zoom. That's mounted into a x2 barlow lens (essentially a teleconverter). The telescope itself is a Celestron Omni xlt 150. So the Telescope, barlow and eyepiece become the lens, and since the eyepiece zooms, I can change magnification.





Here's a 100% crop from the second image (Crater Theophilus, about 100km across):



Here's my sorry attempt at Venus. As I said, the mirror in my telescope isn't aligned properly:

magicbastarder

phutyle wrote: »

I tried taking Venus last weekend with my Sony A77 attached to a telescope, but the scope isn't properly collimated, so I wasn't only getting a hint of the crescent shape of Venus. I spent hours trying to align the mirrors correctly, it's nearly there, and good enough for the moon, but haven't quite got it yet for the smaller objects.

what sort of scope?
i have an 8.5" dobsonian which has been in storage for 10 years, so i suspect the mirror would need resilvering, but i was wondering what sort of objects would be bright enough to get an exposure short enough to negate the effect of trailing?

Gregor Samsa

magicbastarder wrote: »

what sort of scope?
i have an 8.5" dobsonian which has been in storage for 10 years, so i suspect the mirror would need resilvering, but i was wondering what sort of objects would be bright enough to get an exposure short enough to negate the effect of trailing?

Sorry, I edited my post above to mention the telescope and some of the other gear..

I'm only starting out in this, so I don't know much, so I wouldn't like to comment really on what can or can't be done. I'm only experimenting myself.

I have a tracking motor for my scope, which certainly helps a lot with stars (you don't need it for the Moon, and probably not Venus or Mars), but I haven't put it to any good use yet. My goal is to get as good a shot of Andromeda as I can, but I haven't even found it yet

Here's a 98 second exposure from a few weeks ago. Polar alignment wasn't done perfectly, ISO is too high (500), and I just pointed it random at the sky, but you can see there's very little trailing for such a long exposure. This is a crop from a shot with the camera piggybacked on the telescope, with a 20mm lens. So it's just using a camera lens, not the telescope optics. The scope is basically just a tracking tripod in this one:

Damokc

You can tell it's going to be a big bright moon alright this weekend. It's even very bright outside tonight. This is the super moon from March last year.
Super moon! by Damien Casey, on Flickr