Night time photo – 30 second shutter speed
Click for Hi-Res version
The large dot on the right is Jupiter. I’m not sure what the star cluster in the middle is though.
Beautiful Moon Shot
The clouds were rolling in fast so I had to be quick with this one.
Taken through a Celestron AstroMaster 130EQ telescope with an iPhone held by hand up to the eye piece. This technique works remarkably well for The Moon. It becomes a lot more tricky when it comes to planets though.
Timelapse of Jupiter
South West London – 13th December 2012 – 9:30pm
Using a webcam attached to the end of a telescope.
Jupiter through the telescope with a webcam.
Came out pretty well in the end. It’s a little bit bright but that’s because I couldn’t find a filter to stick on the end of it. The webcam isn’t too hot either, wrong type of sensor. Nether-the-less still pretty happy with the result.
Here’s my webcam with the lens and focus wheel removed from the front. I’ve set it in a lump of blu-tak (well green in this case) in order to get a straight edge on the front of the camera. The Logitech C905 webcam is not very powerful, and is a rather odd shape to attach a tube to. The cylinder I’ve used is a camera film case (with the end cut off) which just so happens to be exactly 1/4 of an inch, making it the perfect tube to slot into the telescope view finder.
The Moon
On the way home from work I was disheartened to see the clouds rolling in. That said I was able to find a few breaks in the cloud to get a few snaps of The Moon which was extremely bright last night. Almost too bright to get a nice photo. That said, my real target was Jupiter. She is highly visible in the UK skies at the moment at very sociable hours too.
I had taken apart my Logitech C910 Webcam and fixed it to a camera film case in order to slot it into the telescope view finder however I was unable to get any useful looking photographs. I will have to spend some time trying to configure the thing, to focus is correctly. Unfortunately the weather meant I didn’t have too long, so the shots below are merely taken holding an iPhone to the lens with a [not always] steady hand.
The last photograph is Jupiter, again with the iPhone. You can just about make out a couple of it’s Moons close by. I could make out the patterns on the surface of the planet, but, predictably, this is not possible with a shaky hand holding a mobile device. The webcam is coming though!
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- The Moon as seen from SW19, UK on 06/12/2012
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- Edge shot of The Moon
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- The Moon – Close up edge shot.
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- Jupiter with a shakey hand
Close up Full Moon
Awesome result, merely by holding up my digital camera (with a steady hand) to the lens of my telescope.
If anyone is interested in Astronomy then you have to check out Astronomy Cast, a free weekly podcast by Fraser Cane and Dr Pamela Gay.
Autostitch IPhone App
A few photo’s I stitched together using the IPhone app Autostitch
View from a boat on the Thames
Webcam Filter Dev
Playing around with webcams. Actionscript 3.0. Source to come when it’s tidy.
