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Any photo.net regulars astrophotographers?


russ_arcuri

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I'm wondering of any of the photo.net regulars do astrophotography. My own efforts have been limited to fixed tripod-based photography of constellations and comets, and a few shots of the moon through my telescope. Recent shots of comet Hale-Bopp with my 85/1.8 came out quite impressive, despite less than ideal conditions.
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I've dabbled a bit with both fixed and tracking lenses. Mostly

eclipse stuff, comets (not yet Hale-Bopp though) and the like.

One thing I've found is that

shooting fast lenses wide open certainly shows up any vignetting

the lens has on long sky exposures!

 

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Here's an example of a partial lunar eclipse photo. Shot on Kodachrome

200. As for the lens, it was probably a 500/5 with a 1.4x or a

2x TC on it. Exposure unrecorded (though probably in the 1/60

to 1/15 second range). Mirror pre-fired. It's not a great scan,

the original looks a lot better. There is a huge range in

brightness across the moon in a partial eclipse. No easy way

to use a split ND filter with telephoto lenses though...

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<center>

<img src="http://bobatkins.photo.net/photos/MOON1.JPG" width=373

height=354 alt="Lunar Eclipse">

</center>

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I've done a little astrophotography and enjoyed it a lot. I got some good results shooting Hayutake(sp?) last year using Royal Gold 1000 with a 135/2 Nikkor wide open with exposures around 30 seconds. It helped a lot that the comet was right near the North Star. I'd like to get a Meade LX200 someday but that would be one more money sink I don't nead.

 

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If you're looking for more information you should go to <a href="http://xp6.dejanews.com/bg.xp?level=sci.astro">the astronomy newsgroups</a>.

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My wife, Maggie, gave me a small telescope for Christmas in 1990 and we both joined an astronomy club in April, 1991. We thought that astrophotography was a really stupid part of the hobby. Everyone in our club that did it was always cussing at the sky conditions, the seeing and their equipment. When they received their results, they cussed some more. Why would anyone subject themselves to such abuse? About two years later we got a Tele Vue Genesis to better view the Mars opposition of the following Spring. Meanwhile, there was a lunar eclipse coming up and Maggie suggested we try to photograph it. Unfortunately, the pictures came out great. Hey, this isn't so bad. Hardly cussed at all.

 

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Those eclipse pictures were taken from our front yard with the Genesis mounted on a Bogen 3021 tripod. Now, we travel two hours to a site 8500 feet above sea level with a vanload of heavy equipment. The "tripod" took me two months to design and is custom machined from aircraft aluminum. It weighs in at about 80 pounds. The German equatorial tracking head (computer guided) is another 95 pounds. This is to steady an eleven pound telescope (we still use the Genesis). The entire rig cost about $6000, not including the van we bought to haul it around in. We still think astrophotography is stupid. There is lots of cussing.

 

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Seriously, we have a ball and it doesn't have to be expensive. We've had excellent widefield results with a homemade "barndoor" tracker carrying a camera with a normal 50mm lens. Such a rig would be great for Hale-Bopp if you plan to do exposures of up to 15 minutes. By the way, the best films to use are Fujicolor Super G 800 Plus and Kodak Pro 400 PPF (be sure it's the PPF). These films exhibit little reciprocity failure and render the colors nicely.

 

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For those who are interested in seeing a sample of our recent work, check out this month's (April) ASTRONOMY magazine or go to the Tele Vue homepage Gallery section.

 

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By the way, although astrophotography can be extremely technically (and even physically) demanding, terrestrial photography still presents the greatest challenges. Every picture is a learning experience and the good ones are few and far between. Sort of like golf.

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