2. Astronomy

Astro Photos in the Digital Age

Astro photography has dramatically changed in the digital age. The photos in this gallery demonstrate what can be done with a digital camera and some nice lenses.
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The Double Cluster with Comet Hartley (fuzz ball) about half way to right edge of photo. This photos was taken on an unguided clock drive mount with a 400mm f/2.8 Canon lens about 20 miles east of Santa Fe NM. This image was processed by stacking 9, 20 second images.
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The Double Cluster with Comet Hartley (fuzz ball) about half way to right edge of photo. This photos was taken on an unguided clock drive mount with a 400mm f/2.8 Canon lens about 20 miles east of Santa Fe NM. This image was processed by stacking 9, 20 second images.

DoubleClusterComet

  • The Double Cluster with Comet Hartley (fuzz ball) about half way to right edge of photo. This photos was taken on an unguided clock drive mount with a 400mm f/2.8 Canon lens about 20 miles east of Santa Fe NM. This image was processed by stacking 9, 20 second images.
  • The Double Cluster photo taken at 800mm, f/5.6 (400mm f/2.8 and 2X extender) 15 seconds with ISO set to 10,000.
  • The Milky Way as seen in fall. We see the Milky Way, our galaxy, edge on and that’s why it looks like a band or path of a high concentration of stars. Our galaxy is a spiral galaxy much like Andromeda and so we also have dust lanes that are visible. You can see streaks of dark areas in the band of stars and these are dust clouds. This is a panorama made up of two images take with a zoom lens at 26mm, f/3.2, 15 seconds, ISO 6400.
  • This is the same image as the previous Milky Way photo but with some objects labeled. The center of our galaxy is off to the right of this image.
  • The Pleiades is an open cluster with some “reflection nebula” around the brighter stars. This type of nebula is blue-white because it’s dust that is reflecting the star light. Photo taken at 800mm, f/5.6 (400mm f/2.8 and 2X extender) 20 seconds with ISO set to 20,000.
  • This composite image shows the apparent angular size of the Moon and Venus 12 days before Venus passed in front of the Sun. In this image the Moon is just slightly smaller than the angular size of the Sun. The image of Venus added in the middle of the Moon is at the same magnification so you can see the relative angular size of the two celestial objects. The enlarged insert in the upper left shows the atmospheric refraction effects on Venus (about 15 degrees above the horizon) that produce a red rim at the bottom and a blue-green rim at the top. This effect is more pronounced the closer the object gets to the horizon.
  • This composite image shows five positions and times for the Venus transit. A “transit” is when a planet passes between the Sun and the Earth and we see the planet in silhouette against the Sun's disk. This gives you a general idea of the relative size of the Sun and Venus.
  • This composite image of the February 20, 2008 Total Lunar Eclipse shows the Moon as it is entering the Earth’s shadow (right), in the middle of the eclipse, and as it is exiting the shadow. These three images were aligned using background objects so that the true size of the Earth’s shadow could be shown. You can get a feel for its size by drawing an imaginary circle matching the edge of the shadow on the first and last image. The Moon was placed to one side of the photographic frame so that Saturn (which was very close to the eclipsed Moon) could be included in the image.
  • 07-VG7844 Comet 17P Holems, November 4, 2007. The unusual feature of this comet is that the tail was pointed exactly away from Earth. This meant that the tail is only seen behind the comet head. This comet earned the nick name the “Fried Egg Comet”. Photo taken with a stationary 400mm f/2.8 lens (no clock drive used).
  • 11DC2880 Sunspots July 29, 2011 The dark center of the spot is call the Umbra and the lighter gray area around the Umbra is call the Penumbra. The dark center of the larger spots in this photo are about two or three times the diameter of the Earth. An 1100mm f/7 APO lens with 2X TC (EFL = 2200mm) was used to capture this image. A 5ND filter was use to reduce the light by 16 Stops (0.0015% Transmission) in order to get the sun's light level in a safe range.
  • 11VG0016 The Super Moon. This is a photo of the full Moon at Perigee, 221,565 miles (356,577 km) the closest the Moon gets to the Earth. This makes the Moon appear around 12% larger than it appear when it’s at Apogee 252,682 miles (406,655 km) the farthest distance from the Earth. The orange fringe at the bottom of the Moon is produced by atmospheric refraction. This is common for objects low on the horizon but it may be a bit surprising in this case because the moon was about 30 degrees above the horizon. 2200mm FL on full frame camera.
  • 11VG0016-Moon at A & P: The moon travels in an elliptical orbit which means that sometimes the moon is closer to us than at other times. This image shows the dramatic difference in size that can result from that orbit. Both images of the moon were taken with the same optical setup and processed at the same sale.
  • 12DA5662-Moon Earthshine: This is a composite of two images with about seven stops difference in exposure between them. That's a ratio of 128:1in light level. The brighter part of the moon (at the bottom) is illuminated directly by the sun. The fainter part of the moon is illuminated by light reflecting off the earth. For those of us watching on the east coast this light is primarily reflecting off the Pacific Ocean when viewing a newly crescent moon in the evening. Photo was taken with 1100mm f/7 Astro Physics lens. It's very important to use clean, high contrast optics to capture photos like this because of the high contrast lighting on the moon.
  • 10-VG7079-92 This image is a combination of seven of the lightning photos take the same evening. The lightning is real and shown where it actually struck.
  • Jupiter with moons: Arrows point to moons. (same as previous image).
  • M57 Ring Nebula, 400mm f/2.8, 18 stacked 15 second exposures
  • 12XC2456 Jupiter with the 4 Galilean moons. Galileo Galilei was the first person to see the moons around Jupiter when he was using a small refracting telescope in 1609.
  • 9 Day-Moon 121222 This is a three image panorama taken with a focal length of 4700mm.
  • This image of the full moon is a six image panorama using a focal length of 4700mm. The original image is 72MP in size.
  • The Moon and Jupiter. Photo taken January 21, 2013 with 800mm focal length f/5.6, ISO 1250, 1/1000 sec. and was slightly cropped. There are three Jupiter moons visible in a line from 11:00 to 5:00. The Moon passed about a half degree below Jupiter.
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