01.01.13

here are two pictures i took on the 29th of december. happy new year, by the way!

canon 60D / iso 125 / f/5 / 1/100sec.

canon 60D / iso 1250 / f/5.6 / 1/13sec.

x

mixed goodie bag from the past couple of weeks.

here are a bunch of photos i've taken over the last month and a half. i haven't gotten around to uploading these here because to be pretty honest i'm not all that familiar with the summer night sky.  i feel like the biggest sky noob even talking about it, so let's just get to the pics.

great nebula in orion (M42). this time in colour, yay!

canon 60D / iso 5000 / f/5.6 / 4sec @ 250mm (first image) / 3.2sec @ 300mm (second image)

you may have to fullsize this image to appreciate its content, but that's jupiter and the four galilean moons io, callisto, ganymede, and europa. callisto is the dimmest of the four, but i'm not sure how to ID the others :P here's an image from wikipedia to help place them:

none of the above were taken using a telescope! couldn't finish without something taken through the dobsonian though, so here's a happy jupiter. i couldn't expose it enough to get the moons in there too, or i'd lose all the banding detail on the planet. nonetheless, enjoy!

jupity mcjupe jupe joopin' around in space.

canon 60D / iso 800 / f/5.6 / 1/20sec.

no penumbral lunar eclipse photo this time around because to be honest, it sucked.

that's all for now :)

a total solar eclipse!

or 95% total, for you see we were supposed to go and watch the total eclipse in cairns but my university decided to stick my exam right on eclipse day. :( so unfortunately no sweet diamond ring or totality images, just a smiling sun. luna and sol, playing hide and seek. let's take a look.

canon 60D / iso 200 / f/5.6 / 1/125sec

23.09.2012 : the large magellanic cloud

pentax k-5 / iso 1600 / f/1.4 / 50mm / 45sec

so. dylan and i went deep sky object hunting the other night, found a few notables.. most impressive (to me) was just how much detail in andromeda we could gather from the light information naked-eye (binoculars), and dylan's photos of the LMC & SMC. these parts of the sky are foreign to me, as i started this hobby back in january when the sky looked very different. i had seen the magellanic clouds before, but had never thought to photograph them. that will definitely have to change after having seen them in last night's conditions.

for more info about this awesome irregular galaxy, zoom over to wikipedia.

this image is dylan's, i played with it in lightroom a bit. you can view the original here.

stay tuned! lots more photos to come from subsequent trips, we're gonna make this a regular thing. the sky is just too gorgeous 30 minutes out of town not to keep at it.

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Orion's Up!

The famous Orion Nebula (Messier 42).

Ignore the dark noise, I didn't stack it with any dark frames.

The Orion Nebula (aka M42).

I had a heap of other ones that were a little more zoomed in, but they were all out of focus - so I had to crop a wider angled shot and a lot of detail of the nebula itself was lost because of that.

29.08.2012

so this is dylan's composite image of roughly seven different exposures of about 1 minute each, taken a couple of weeks ago. i played around with it in lightroom but i don't think he was too impressed with the results. i'm uploading them anyway, because i spent time on it, and because i can.

canon 60d / iso 800 / f/1.8 / 1.6sec

guess who stayed up all night to check orion out in the dawn? this yves right here. turns out darkness doesn't really help the nebula stand out to the naked eye at all. i have no idea how i'm ever going to get a proper photograph of you, M42. i have an unfriendly suspicion that it'll cost me a great deal of money to achieve this goal.

08.08.2012

full moon, august 2nd

canon 60d / iso 100 / f/4.5 / 1/160sec

many different objects in this widefield taken at 50mm, notably messier 7, the butterfly cluster (M6), the lagoon and trifid nebulas (M8 & 20) and if you look closely, M23 is faintly visible in the bottom right as a smudge.

canon 60d / iso 500 / f/1.8 / 5sec

my first attempt at M4, the small smudge left of centre between antares (big red giant) and al niyat, or sigma scorpii, the lower of the two bright stars near the heart of scorpius.

canon 60d / iso 1000 / f/1.8 / 3.2sec

31.07.2012

ye olde sun. 

canon 60d / iso 640 / 1/50sec

moon 29.07.2012

canon 60d / iso 400 / f/6.5 / 1/15sec

23.07.2012

dawn conjunction of the pleiades, jupiter, aldebaran & venus

canon 60D / iso 1600 / f/5.6 / 6sec

orion's belt & sword (FINALLY) same specs as above.

and just for shits and giggles, here's a terrible image of the star-forming region in M42 aka my first (and last for a while) horrific attempt to take a photo of a nebula. oh sweet jesus this is bad. don't even look at it. wtf orion, why you have to be so difficult?

23.07.2012 part ii

scorpius in the afternoon
canon 60D / iso 800 / f/3.5 / 4sec

twilight conjunction of moon, mars, saturn and spica

canon 60D / iso 1250 / f/3.5 / 1.6sec

young moon

canon 60D / iso 640 / f/5.6 / 1/60sec

20.07.2012

well it's the 43rd anniversary of the first moon landing and i decided to give some wide-field shots a try tonight because all the clouds have *finally* disappeared and the moon's still long under the horizon. :)

saturn, spica and mars sit close to each other in the sky tonight.

canon 60D / iso 3200 / f/3.5 / 10sec.

a familiar sight. :3

canon 60D / iso 3200 / f/3.5 / 10sec.

interesting to see how our vantage point has changed when you look at the milky way compared to my previous images. it's like the perceived dome of the sky has completely shifted. cool stuff!

canon 60D / iso 3200 / f/3.5 / 10sec.

scorpius! my favourite constellation. well, most of it. scorpius was directly above me, so my aiming was a bit lacklustre and i couldn't be bothered waiting until later on.

canon 60D / iso 3200 / f/3.5 / 15sec.

and this doesn't really count, i was just messing with my settings, but.. plane photobomb!

canon 60D / iso 3200 / f/3.5 / 10sec.

that's about all.

19.07.2012

here are a couple of images i haven't uploaded because i've been busy recently. not sure of the specs for these, but i'm sure that doesn't matter too much. took them off my facebook album before i removed it.

 saturn, early morning (around 3am) july 4th.

binary star alpha centauri AB / rigil kent. 

one of the brightest stars in the southern sky, though it appears as a single point of light, it's really a double star system. :)

the full moon of july 4th.

and now for some interesting lunar textures~

that's all folks.

11.06.2012

tried out some new plossl eyepieces tonight :) here are three images of saturn with the 9mm. 

canon 60d / iso 6400 / f/11 / 1/20sec

08.06.2012

i found saturn with my camera adapted to my dobsonian! 05.06.2012

not sure of specs, wasn't keeping track.

transit of venus across the disc of the sun, 06.06.2012

canon 60d / iso 2000 / f/5.6 / 1/2500sec

full album here.

05.06.2012

good news! i persevered, and it worked! here's the full disc of the sun, taken in no-flash mode so i'm not sure of the specs. i'll have to figure out what specs are best for solar photography? anyway, yay! transit tomorrow! i feel much more prepared than i did yesterday. :)

04.06.2012

a partial lunar eclipse.

canon 60D / iso 200 / f/5.6 / 1/80sec

so this is my first attempt at solar photography: about a third of the sun's disc. some sunspots are visible, but i gave up quickly. it was really (really) hot outside, and it was tough to keep trying for a full image. maybe tomorrow.

specs unknown, i was just rolling.

22.05.2012

here are my first proper shots of the milky way galaxy, taken a couple of hours apart.

canon 60d / iso 1600 / f 3.5 / 20 sec