CCD vs Film? Lots of time vs no patience? Alright, this is your place to discuss all the astrophotography what's and what's not. You can discuss about techniques, accessories, cameras, whatever....just make sure you also post some nice photos here too!
I finally managed to capture Uranus and Neptune from Singapore a few nights ago. It was also my first time seeing Uranus visually. I think I saw Neptune visually in Mersing before, but it was through a small scope and hence it didn't appear too different from surrounding stars. This time managed to see both visually and disc-like, quite distinct from stars.
Here are some shots to share:
These were shot with a one-shot colour camera:
These were shot with a monochrome camera (RGB later combined and enlarged 300% in Photoshop):
Uranus:
Neptune:
Finally, a full Solar System collection except for Mercury. I hope to get Mercury one day!
"The importance of a telescope is not how big it is, how well made it is.
It is how many people, less fortunate than you, got to look through it."
-- John Dobson.
Hope you bag Mercury soon! That one likes to hide near the Sun and behind our low-lying tropical clouds. I think it's usually difficult to image it during full darkness as it would be too low, so the prime time would be around 20 mins before sunrise or 20 mins after sunset (i.e. depending on whether Mercury is near its western or eastern elongation, respectively). This webpage provides some useful info on the dates of its greatest eastern and western elongations (next one would be round the corner at dawn on 30 July 2013!): http://www.jgiesen.de/skymap/MercuryVenus/mercury.html
Thanks very much Gavin! Will def try but I don't have a clear eastern or western view from my place so will need to image w smaller portable equipment!
Congrats ebenyonder...!
I remember seeing it visually at an insane 800x on my ETX105 with maxed out Barlow in Singapore. It was probably blurred out but I could not tell as I was excited at seeing them both as disks. What an amazing power horse the ETX105 is!
I saw it the same night Samuel did his comparison of his Nexstar 4 with my ETX side by side. His review is still on cloudynights!
The Boldly Go Where No Meade Has Gone Before Captain, RSS Enterprise NCC1701R United Federation of the Planets
On the topic of viewing/imaging planets... do try (dwaft planet) Pluto too! I have imaged it from Singapore with my LX90 8" SCT but not from a dark sky site. It's just a whitish dot anyway. In terms of visual, I viewed Pluto through the LX90 in July last year at Sedili, with Jiahao. We confirmed it was Pluto through a careful study of detailed charts and through my images taken in the days just before and after the observation (showing that the object had moved). It was a faint whitish dot that was seen in the eyepiece with direct vision (then at mag 14.0).
![[smilie=good-job.gif]](./images/smilies/good-job.gif "good-job")
