The Moon, Venus and Aldebaran were grouped nicely in the evening sky above the Lake of Constance on April 21st 2015: Read More
Category Archives: widefield
13.1.2015 Mercury and Venus conjunction
After work I rode my bicycle towards Liechtenstein (a very small country next to Vorarlberg, the Austrian province where I live in), to catch the Mercury/Venus conjunction next to the Egelsee. As I only had my RX100 compact camera with me, the focal length was rather limited. To pass the time for the sky to darken I took some shots of the pond.
Mercury and Venus conjunction, Iridescent Clouds
On January 10th 2015 bright iridescent clouds were visible the whole day. At sunset the colors became even more intense and many people became about this rare atmospheric phenomena. Neighbours asked what those colors in the sky actually were.
At sunset I was able to take some images of the nice Venus and Mercury conjunction.
All cloud images are straight out of camera (SOOC) with no color, brightness or contrast changes. The conjunction images were slightly processed in Adobe lightroom to make the planets stand out more prominent.
Vacation Astrophotography
On vacation in Brittany, France I spent one evening doing Astrophotography using the Polarie for tracked exposures: Read More
Bright night, bright meteor
With the so-called super-moon shining brightly outside the chances of successful meteor observations are pretty low due to the light of the moon washing out the fainter stars and of course meteors too!
But as the weather prospect for the next few nights is pathetic I set up the camera and took 434 shots using my Nikon D7000 with the Samyang (Rokinon, Walimex) 14mm f/2.8 camera at f/2.8, 2,5s and ISO3200. One of the frames actually captured a quite bright meteor:
Spring Puddles
Last week’s snow has almost completely melted and the stars are reflected in the resulting puddles of meltwater.
This image is a stack of 38 individual exposures: Nikon D7000, Walimex (Ssamyang) 14mm f/2.8, 30s at f/3.2, ISO 1600. Stacked in Startrails, edited in Photoshop (airplane removal) and Lightroom.
2014-03-27 Moon and Venus
Yet another month has passed and the Moon joins Venus in the morning sky.
Moon and Venus, 1/50s at f/5.6, Nikon D7000, 180mm f/2.8, cropped
California Nebula
The California Nebula (NGC_1499) is a HII emission region in the constellation Perseus, it was discoverd by E.E. Barnard in 1884 on long exposure plates.
Because of the red color and it’s faintness it is usually only visible in photographs.
I used my unmodified Nikon D7000 camera in combination with the Nikon AF-Nikkor 85mm f/1.8 for this photograph. 11 individual exposures of 120 seconds at f/2.8 were combined using Regim by Andreas Rörig. Additional adjustments were made in Adobe Lightroom.
Final Test Images
Last night I did some last tests in preparation for upcoming travel.
Polarie first test
In preparation for an upcoming trip I am doing some equipment tests to prepare for the opportunity to observe from a dark sky.
It turns out even with the very rough polar alignment that is possible with the built-in peephole of the Polaire tracking mount 30 second exposures are possible with 180mm focal length on an APS-C camera:
3 x 30s – f/4 – ISO 1600, no darks, no flats, stacked with DeepSky Stacker, Nikon AF Nikkor 180mm f/2.8, Nikon D7000
This is the ful frame:
detail of the image above: Read More