Astrophotography

Pleiades Star Cluster

Click for Hi-Res version

Click for Hi-Res version

The large dot on the right is Jupiter. You can clearly make out the 7 bright stars in the cluster, but if not see below for an easy to understand illustration.

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.

Video

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.

Jupiter through the telescope with a webcam.

Image

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!