Tag: astronomy

Astrophotography Moon Winner

Inspired by this stunning Astrophotography of the Year winner in the moon category, I thought I’d have a go and see what I could do.

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https://www.rmg.co.uk/whats-on/astronomy-photographer-year/galleries/our-moon-2024

Unfortunately, my best effort last night didn’t even come close.

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The winning image is of a small section to the top right of my photo. Still, undeterred, there are a few things I could do to try and improve things.

  1. Better telescope, better camera, better lenses. These all cost money. In some cases, serious amounts of money.
  2. Move to a better climate. This is my favourite solution. There are people who can actually plan what and when they’re going to photograph. They have regular clear skies and low light pollution. In my case, it’s more a matter of waking up at midnight, sticking my head out of the window, and if it’s a clear sky, hurriedly getting dressed and dashing out into the back garden to see what I can capture before the clouds roll in again.
  3. Don’t photograph the full moon. The above photograph has very low contrast because it’s a full moon. The winning photograph was taken when the sun was casting beautiful shadows across the craters and mountains of Sinus Iridium.
  4. Try stacking photos. This was a single image. It might be worth taking a few dozen and try stacking the results. Might be worth a go.

I’ll let you know how I get on.

Comet on the Move

The movement of comet Tsuchinshan–ATLAS is quite obvious from night to night. Here are a couple of images taken last night and the night before.

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The comet’s now well on its lonely, icy way back to the Oort cloud.

I was hoping to do a fancy picture with the two images merged, but the program I was trying to use kept crashing. So you’re stuck with side by side images for now,

I also tried to get some telescope images last night, but neither the telescope nor the camera would cooperate. The telescope refused to save its alignment, so tended to wander off all over the place. The camera’s focus assist also decided to show a blank screen, so it was nearly impossible to get a good focus. It’s live update screen was also taking ages to update, when I need it to operate in real time. As a result, most of last night’s close ups weren’t very good.

There are days when every bit of technology I touch just seems to break.

Comet Tsuchinshan–ATLAS

Last night, finally, I managed to get some pictures of the comet that’s being dominating the astronomy news for the last couple of months. Until now it’s always been below the horizon or behind clouds.

I struggled to find it at first even with binoculars. I was expecting a naked eye object, but in the end it took a camera to reveal it.

So here it is, looking west from my back garden in Southend at about 7.30 last night.

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This is a cropped and slightly enhanced version. The original looks more like this.

(The comet’s near the bottom in the middle of the picture.) 0.5s exposure at ISO 3200.

And through the telescope.

Again, this has been slightly enhanced. The original is a bit darker.

2s exposure, ISO 3200. These are single frames, so no stacking.

The comet should still be visible for a while, although I’m told it will fade rapidly. As you can see above, it’s already not that bright.