Astrophotography

[moot]

Thanks BigR. I couldnt tell what was what. Autofocus misses the stars, the eyepiece is too small to manually tell focus thru, and the roof part I was shooting from was flimsy enough that just shifting my balance without moving my feet would interfere with the camera on the tripod.

[CptTrips]

I keep getting the dreaded error 404 file or directory not found 
tried on 2 seperat puters on 2 seperate connections (1 at home with fios 20/5 and the other on my laptop using wireless at work)

Sorry, I had moved those since the original post.  Try here:

http://jasonirby.zenfolio.com/p753953902/h375ca91a#h375ca91a

and

http://jasonirby.zenfolio.com/p753953902/h2f69d32c#h2f69d32c

Click on the image to expand as far as your screen size allows.

Wab

[CptTrips]

Thanks BigR. I couldnt tell what was what. Autofocus misses the stars, the eyepiece is too small to manually tell focus thru, and the roof part I was shooting from was flimsy enough that just shifting my balance without moving my feet would interfere with the camera on the tripod.

Congrats.  I'm sure you'll get years of fun out of it.

Here is Hap's page: http://www.hapg.org/camera%20mods.htm

If you're just getting started you might try making a barn-door mount to counteract the stars trailing:

http://www.angelfire.com/stars2/bwolfe/BarnDoor.htm


Clear Skies,
Wab

[Rich46yo]

Awsome. Really an awsome Hobby.

[mensa180]

Wab I have a Panasonic FZ28, is that suitable for capturing the night sky?  I have tried with 15/30/60 second exposures and I can clearly see the stars... however my pictures have a red tint due to a street light nearby.  Also the stars have tails, I'm guessing because of the rotation of the earth.

Any tips on how to get a better picture?

[moot]

Thanks Wab.

Mensa, the only work arounds I know for light pollution are shade (on the lens and around your shooting spot), or just driving away from the city.  For stability, either shoot from a tripod, or bootstrap one to stick your camera to.. 30sec is going to show spin unless you have a tracking mount. You can do multiple shorter shots and then layer them in an app like photoshop, tho obviously your earth landscape's gonna blur in proportion.

[CptTrips]

Wab I have a Panasonic FZ28, is that suitable for capturing the night sky?  I have tried with 15/30/60 second exposures and I can clearly see the stars... however my pictures have a red tint due to a street light nearby.  Also the stars have tails, I'm guessing because of the rotation of the earth.

Any tips on how to get a better picture?

Hi Mensa,

I'm not familiar with that particular camera.  I'll just try and give you some general suggestions.

Depending on the focal length you are using, sooner or later if you are using a fixed tripod, the images will trail.  All the stars in the sky are rotating around the star Polaris (from a Northern hemiphere viewpoint).  If you are using a shorter focal length lens you can get away with a longer exposure before that is noticable, a longer focal length will show it sooner.  Eventually, you'll need some type of tracking like the barn-door mount mentioned above to conteract this movement. 

The red tint you are seeing is probably due to light pollution.  This will limit the length of exposure you can capture before it becomes objectionable.  If your camera allows you to see a histogram of the last taken picture, you can do a series of test exposures and try and get the peak of the distrobution to stay at about 30-50% of maximum.  See the following discussion:

http://www.astropix.com/PFA/SAMPLE3/SAMPLE3.HTM

If this is not enough to bring out the detail you want, then you need to take a series of images at this exposure length andthen "stack" them with software.  A good free software for this is:

http://deepskystacker.free.fr/english/index.html

I have not used it myself.  I use ImagesPlus, but I've heard good things about this one.

If you have any other questions, let me know.  I'll try my best to help.


Clear Skies,
Wab