I've always been interested in the night sky. All those little stars and things. The moon through a telescope, star-trails, nebulae, planets. Over the years I've made various attempts to photograph them, starting way back when brother-in-law Brian and I tried to shoot film photos of the moon thru binoculars up at Dad's farm.
Since them, I've gotten a little more sophisticated with equipment. Either using a Celestron 900mm scope with an Eos digital camera in prime focus, a telephoto lens for the Eos or a de-lensed webcam in prime focus. Here are some of the best results made into a composite showing Luna, Saturn and Jupiter and some of its moons. They could all do with another go, with better gear and better processing, but it was fun getting that far.
Here's a more recent effort, using a Japanese Sigma 500mm telephoto and the Canon Eos 600D unmodified (i.e. with the UV-IR filter still in it). These are just two of the nebula to be found in the Orion constellation. It involved taking tens of 30 second exposures and then 'stacking' them using DeepSkyStacker software.
Not bad, but could be better. The hydrogen alpha-line illuminated dust clouds are much more extensive than shown here. Also the UV-IR filter in the Eos cuts that color somewhat. I'll try again now that I've got my tracking telescope mount working better and I can make longer exposures.
It's not all about the "long eyes". I was amazed at the result of using the astrophotography feature of my Pixel 5 smartphone when out camping. Amazed I didn't end up throwing it in the lake! Great image, lousy software! Main shortcoming is that the controls for taking the photo are all on the screen and the phone was lying on a rock pointing up and I couldn't see the screen, naturally. This wouldn't have been a problem except that the astrophotography feature is 'automagic' and only turns itself on when things are still and dark enough. First time I used it, I didn't know that, so I couldn't work out what the *&^&^%%^##@ it was doing.
Above is another attempt, in the freezing cold on a winter's night in the middle of the Snowy Mountains in NSW. I figured out a method to fool the *(&&*%^%^$$%# phone!. I laid the camera with its lens facing the ground, in the dark. Now because it was still and dark, it went into astrophotography mode. Then I pressed the start button on the screen, without moving it. A 4 minute timer indicator came up on the screen, which I could see because the dang thing was still pointing at the ground! Success. Now all I had to do was flip it over and point it at the sky. Because it was busily accumulating photons, I made sure this is all done in the dark and the bit of movement before I got it pointed in the right direction didn't add much 'noise'. It did work, though the Milky Way was off centre (I cropped it in the image above) but as I was freezing at the time I didn't want to try again. Remember the damn gloves!
In the above, you can't see it really well, but that fuzzy lump in the middle of this photo taken from the balcony of the Inverloch RACV resort in Victoria Australia (latitude about -35 degrees and nice dark skies over the Bass Straight) is a globular cluster near the Southern Cross. Omega Centauri. You can just about make out the star trails zeroing in on celestial south just outside the top right corner too. Taken with the astrophotography feature on the Pixel 5 smartphone on 2x zoom. Just as well it's the biggest globular cluster in the sky otherwise you wouldn't be able to tell it was anything more than a fuzzy star.
Speaking of fuzzy things in the sky, here's McNaught's Comet, 2007. Eos on 900mm Celestron.
Transit of Venus, 2002. Projected onto a screen and then photographed.
Milky Way from Larapinta Central Australia 2016. Unmodified Canon Eos 600D 10mm wide-angle lens 67s exposure, F5, ISO 1600.
Journey to the South (Celestial) Pole
One of the things it is important to know for astro is: Where is the Celestial Pole? Unlike the lucky beggars in the North, we don't have a handy bright start to point at and say, "There it is!"
There are a few rules of thumb involving the Southern Cross and the Pointers that'll get you close, but I thought I'd do a better job by taking a long exposure and looking for the concentric centre. After battling with clouds and moons and batteries and intervalometers that didn't want to cooperate, I finally got something half decent. Not brilliant, skies are too light-polluted (I think I live in a Bortle 6-ish area). After some contrast enhancement and arc-splitting I managed to find an approximation and a simple rule using the edge of the garage that will let me find it again quickly as long as I put the tripod in the same place and height every time. Exposure time was slightly less than an hour using the intervalometer in manual mode and the camera in Bulb mode. Batteries on camera went flat before I got back to stop the exposure but the camera was smart enough to save the photo before giving up. ISO was 100, Fstop was 8-ish. Strangely for astro, the ISO and Fstop were designed to make it LESS sensitive to the light because of the absurdly long exposure.)
When your planets align
This photo of Jupiter, Venus, Mars and Saturn (from the bottom) nicely spaced out in the early morning eastern sky was taken with the Pixel 5 in astro mode on 22 April 2022 at 5:30 am. The morning sky was a bit too bright for this to work out the best, what with moon, light pollution, a passing car and the sun just starting to dimly brighten the horizon. It looked pretty good by eye though. I even dragged Jennifer out to have a look. (Hey, it was her idea!) Caught a bit of a meteor/satellite/plane in the right hand side. Astro mode on the Pixel isn't continuous exposure which is why the meteor got mostly chopped. (And is why this mode is not great for meteors)
GoPro
I just realised that my GoPro Hero 7 has a Night-Lapse mode that lets me take a sequence of long exposures at set intervals (say 30sec exposure, wait 30 sec and go again etc) so when the cloudy nights stop I'll test it out. Will be great for a light-weight option when I go hiking to the Bortle 1 skies!.
