What went wrong with this moon shot

[Zad]

Couple of things:

1. The wind probably did vibrate the camera if the tripod was fully extended, and not perfectly stable.
2. Even more than the wind, mirror slap may have caused vibrations as well. Use the mirror lock-up feature of your camera, and/or go to a higher shutter speed.
3. When it is windy, the astmosphere has bad "seeing". This is a similar effect to looking at the air just above the surface of a very hot road. It looks like the air is boiling. Better seeing is ideal, but a faster shutter speed and taking a ton of photos helps on bad seeing. Tons of photos help because there are brief moments when the seeing is good, and the more photos you take, the better chance you have of randomly snapping at the right time.
4. It looks like the photo was taken while the moon was close to the horizon. I can see that because one side of the moon has a blue glow, and the other has a red glow. That's because when the moon is on the horizon, the atmosphere acts like a prism (because the light is entering the atmosphere at a steep angle.) Try shooting when the moon is higher overhead (at least 45 deg. from the horizon.) This also helps with seeing as well, since the light is travelling through less atmosphere.

Here is a link to a photo of the full moon I took with my Canon 350D and a 1200mm telescope:

Full Moon from 2-18-11 - Astrophotogallery

I took about 200 photos, selected about 85 of the best ones, and stacked those images with Nebulosity (astro-photo software). Then I messed with the contrast and color a bit, to enhance the details. If I remember correctly, it was ISO 100 at 1/250 sec. while using the mirror lock-up feature (1200mm is very unforgiving.)

[SwissJon]

Originally Posted by Zad

Couple of things:
Here is a link to a photo of the full moon I took with my Canon 350D and a 1200mm telescope:

Full Moon from 2-18-11 - Astrophotogallery

I took about 200 photos, selected about 85 of the best ones, and stacked those images with Nebulosity (astro-photo software). Then I messed with the contrast and color a bit, to enhance the details. If I remember correctly, it was ISO 100 at 1/255 sec. while using the mirror lock-up feature (1200mm is very unforgiving.)

I'm sure I can see Apollo 11 there

Those are really superb shots. Congratulations.

[Zad]

Thanks Jon! That's funny. I have been working in the astrophotography side of things for about two years now. But the weather has been very uncooperative on the weekends for quite some time. Then I realized that I can point my camera at other stuff besides the night sky. So, I joined this site to help me exlplore some terrestrial photography, and it has been very helpful, and I have been learning a lot.

Here is a link to some of my other astrophotography work:

- Astrophotogallery

The nebula photos are long exposure work. Tracking the sky as the Earth rotates is the biggest challenge. Also, waiting for good conditions has been a great challenge lately.

Zad

[SwissJon]

Cool.. Absolutely amazing what there is above our heads that you can see with the right gear.. What do you use to take these with?

Suggest youconsider macro photography.. Interestingly there's a huge similarity between the two.. You're using the same kind of gear to take photos of things that are otherwise too small for the eye to see..

Personally I like to take long exposure shots, again, it gives a view of the world that the eye can't see because we move too fast.. It's nice, because my job is incredibly stressful at times, and fast moving... Taking exposures of between 5 and 30 seconds forces me to slow down and relax.. I often shoot b&w film at the same time, it's amazing what differences you get between digital and film for the same settings.. Going to have to teach myself to develop my pictures on my own instead of sending them to the lab..

[Zad]

Here is a photo of the rig that I use to do the long exposure stuff (not the moon photo).

The main scope is a 750mm f/5 reflector (the blue one), and you can see the Canon 350D connected to the focuser. The mount is a German Equatorial mount that I align with the Earth's axis if rotation (the procedure called "drift aligning" takes about an hour), so that I can track the target for the full five minutes. BUT, even with that, the tracking is still not perfect because of imperfections of the worm gears that drive the mount. So, I have a guide scope (the black one piggy-backed on top of the main scope) that I use to focus on a star near my target, and it has an eyepiece with a cross hair that I use to make adjustment as needed.

I usually try to take a dozen or so five minute exposures (that's about how long I can stare into the guidescope for now), and stack the photos to get rid of random noise (caused by various factors, but mostly thermal noise). I also take dark frames seperately, and stack those to get rid of the random noise, and subtract them from the lights to get rid of dark current and hot-pixel noise. THEN, I also take flat frames (and darks for the flat frames), to get rid of vignetting, and dust doghnuts.

So, just to process one photo, I combine the dark-flats, and subtract that from the flats, to calabrate the flats. Then I combine the flats to get a master flat. I then combine the dark frames to get a master dark frame. Then I subtract the master flat and master dark, from the light frames (the real image), to calabrate each light frame. Then I align and combine the calibrated lights to get on single image. The software I use is called nebulosity, but there is also some freeware like Registax that can be used. The processing sounds a lot harder than it is. The hardest part is tracking as accurately as possible, and staring through the guide scope for half the night.

Anyway the moon shot was very simple because at 1/250 of a second, you don't have to track or guide. You also don't really need all the calibration frames either, because the image is so bright, and I can use ISO 100. All the long exposurs stuff is taken at ISO 1600. Since I don't have to track, I use my 10" dobsonian with a focal length of 1200mm (@f/4.9).

I have almost saved up enough money to buy a better mount that can take input from a computer. I will then hook a webcam up to my guidescope, and let the computer guide for me (called auto-guiding). I am going to upgrade to an 8" 800mm f/4 imaging scope, and I just picked up a used 450D as well.

By the way, all the red light in the photos is produced by hydrogen alpha, and normal DSLR cameras have a filter that blocks 90% of this light. So I took my 350D completely apart and replaced the filter so that it now only blocks 10% of that light. It totally screws up all the preset white balance settings, so you have to use a gray card and custom white balance, or shoot in RAW and adjust the white balance manually. I just got the filter in for the 450D, but I haven't modified it yet.

It sounds like a lot of effort, but I have a huge interest in astronomy, and also photography, so its fun for me.

Thanks for the compliments!
Zad

[SwissJon]

Sheesh.. And there was me thinking a 30 second exposure at sunset was an effort to get right.