Getting better at this stuff

are there any consumer grade telescopes that would let you see that kind of stuff with the naked eye? nice pics!

I'd like an answer to this as well.

 

Awesome pictures Kerplop! Don't be shy to share them!

are there any consumer grade telescopes that would let you see that kind of stuff with the naked eye? nice pics!

 

 

Any suggestions for a new hobbyist?

 

 

I'd like an answer to this as well.

 

Awesome pictures Kerplop! Don't be shy to share them!

 

 

I'll post more as I get them then.

 

Regarding telescopes that you can see this stuff with the naked eye... yes, there are. DO NOT START WITH A CRAPPY TELESCOPE FROM YOUR LOCAL SHOPPING MALL. The optics are usually PLASTIC, scratch VERY easily, the filters are POOR quality and they are mass produced piles of poo. You are far better off spending an extra $50 or $100 on a telescope that is slightly larger, of a normal manufacturer for the telescopes and something worth your time, especially if you want to keep it for any given period of time.

 

If you ever bought one of those telescopes and were instantly disappointed by the stuff you saw, you need look no further as to why. Those telescopes are often times worse than a set of binoculars. Quality binoculars are often BETTER than some entry level telescopes with poor optics. Some of the guide scopes and tracking scopes are basically like a set of really nice binoculars. I've even taken pictures through my finder scope on the dobsonian I owned and it was 20x better than those crappy department store telescopes.

 

My worst experience with one of those was attempting to clean the eyepiece. It was made of plastic, and upon taking it out of the seating, it literally cracked and flaked into 2 pieces. Terrible quality. You get what you pay for.

 

Good brands:

- Celestron

- Orion

- AstroTech

- Stellarvue

- Meade

- Vixen

 

 

I started with an 8" Dobsonian Telescope. They do not have the greatest optical clarity in the world, but bang for buck they have an insane amount of aperture which is what one would be after for something like looking at nebulae.

 

Here's the telescope I started with:

 

http://www.telescope.com/Orion-SkyQuest-XT....uts?keyword=xt

 

With that telescope, on very very dark nights, I could somewhat see andromeda a little bit, could easily make out Orion's Nebula and could see planetary objects (Jupiter, in which case I could make out the weatherbands). A common name for galaxies is "big fuzzies" because through even a very large telescope, galaxies often show up as blurry bits of light. It's still cool to see them, but don't expect to see what hubble would take a picture of since your eyes just don't work that way

 

I will say though, that through a 2" eyepiece and a 8" dobsonian that Saturn is easy to make out along with the rings and it is very cool to see!

 

I found the dobsonian to be very nice for checking out the moon as well. You could see an awful lot of detail. The downside to a dobsonian is that the mounts are bulky and the telescopes are quite heavy. I was able to fit my 8" telescope in my little 924 in the hatch and could even fit it in my 911, but just barely. So I would say 8" is probably "pushing the limits" of being able to take it places if you want. 10" dobsonians are very nice, but HUGE.

 

There are of course smaller versions that are more inexpensive, 6" and 4" telescopes and you can still make out the objects, just not with quite as much detail. Most objects through a telescope that are nebulae show up as more of a blue/gray coloring though, simply because your eyes aren't able to pick up the light quite as good as a DSLR with all that vivid color

 

If you value quality over quantity then you would want to go with a Refractor and not a Reflector (Dobsonian telescopes are a reflector, meaning everything bounces off of a mirror). The refractor telescopes if they are coated properly have amazing optical clarity and are super crisp and sharp images. I have no issues looking at objects with my tiny little AstroTech, but you would need some good eyepieces to make it worth while on something as small as my photography setup if you want to use the telescope for viewing and not pictures.

 

Here are some pictures I took with my dobsonian when I first started taking pictures (this is literally what you would be able to see with one)

 

This is a picture of Jupiter through the dobsonian I had with one of the moons in orbit (You can make it out just a hair) - oddly enough, jupiter is more clear through the eyepiece than it was taking pictures of it. It's a bit on the overexposed side.

 

Some lunar surface photos with a Nikon D40 (inexpensive DSLR), a 2x barlow (cheap barlow, not a good quality barlow) and the dobsonian

 

 

 

 

This is after taking pictures jupiter with my dobsonian and stacking them (not one single picture, more like 20 pictures stacked)

 

Single stacked composite of Jupiter with the Dobsonian

 

 

Now just so you understand the optical differences, here are lunar examples with my 72mm refractor (that's less than 3" of aperture vs 8") - the clarity is night and day. So aperture will give you more LIGHT so you can see stuff, but it does not equal clarity. So you will need to determine what you want to do. If you want to spend under $500 on a nice telescope that will let you see objects like Orion, seriously thick star clusters, a Dobsonian will get you there easily and inexpensively.

 

If on the other hand, you want to see things with maximum clarity, a mid range refractor of somewhere in the range of 65-70mm would also get you there, however, you will lack the amount of light and therefore those objects may be more dim.

 

All things considered, even with a dobsonian, looking at things like the surface of the moon will blow your mind with a simple barlow considering you'll see things in a level of detail your eyes would never get to normally

Are you going to use the telescope to look at stars or the kinky couple down the street?

Yes

Yes

 

Well then you need optical clarity, not aperture!

Thanks for the explanations Derek!

Thanks for the great response. I have been shopping around, looking to upgrade from a good pair of binoculars while camping. What's your take on some of the auto tracking setups out there? It's always seemed like a novelty to me, but I'm still drawn to the new tech and many are deeply discounted right now. Skymaps is still fairly vague in comparison.

Awesome photos! Keep posting em up.

Thanks for the great response. I have been shopping around, looking to upgrade from a good pair of binoculars while camping. What's your take on some of the auto tracking setups out there? It's always seemed like a novelty to me, but I'm still drawn to the new tech and many are deeply discounted right now. Skymaps is still fairly vague in comparison.

 

My current mount is a Celestron CG-5GT. It is an auto tracking and go to mount, as well as GPS enabled. At first I was hesitant to buy a go to mount, but they are honestly really nice. They work very simply. If you ever want to take pictures of anything a computerized tracking mount is a must. You'll find though that they are usually an equatorial mount and therefore operate different than your average telescope mount. I should clarify, most computerized mounts are Equatorial. There are some goto mounts which are standard mounts, but they aren't tracking mounts if I recall.

 

Most basic mounts (non equatorial) are literally left-right, up-down. The reason I bring this up is that 90% of the tracking mounts I've seen are all equatorial (and with good reason). Equatorial mounts are often very smooth as well, not jerky, very very smooth.

 

An equatorial mount is angled and operates on 2 axis that twist at different angles. The idea behind it is to be able to move with the rotation of the earth once you've done a polar alignment. With an auto tracking mount, all you have to do is line your scope up to polaris (well, technically, close to polaris depending where it's at). Most go to mounts will then calibrate based off of either a 2-star alignment (Point it at a star and hit calibrate, point it to another and hit calibrate) and then it can figure out from there where any object is in the sky. The other method is GPS.

 

Mine is able to lock in with GPS and usually I will take out my phone, look up my map, enter in my GPS coordinates, line it as polaris and start using it. A 2 star alignment is nice, but not always necessary, if you're good enough at determining your location.

 

For some people, learning the sky and constellations is half the fun. But if you're really new to it and you have a hard time reading a star map, or perhaps your eyes aren't the greatest, a go to mount makes things very easy. It's sometimes very nice to pull up the pad, punch in a few buttons and have it sling to the object I want and it will track it for as long as I have it hooked up to my battery.

 

Here's a video of someone with a similar mount and the mount moving (so you have an idea how the axis works):

 

The idea with a tracking mount is basically this... Polaris is almost dead smack center to polar north. The rotation of the earth, if you were to align a scope to that center would make it appear as though everything was turning around that center point. With an equatorial, it's able to compensate by moving ever so slightly with that rotation, once it is aligned of course. Here's a terribly shitty mspaint example I made:

 

The red dot would be true complete polar north, there if you stared at it while the earth rotated, everything would appear to rotate around it. It never moves. Polaris would represent the orange circle. It isn't completely and perfectly centered to the polar north point, but it's very close. SO if you use something such as google sky maps, or a polar calculator, you can figure out where you need to offset your scope. Off to the left and down, or up and to the right, or just a hair to the left, etc. Once that is aligned, you can point your tracking scope to any object in the sky and it will follow up as long as you want it to. It's impressive to watch, really.

I tried some new stacking software called DSS (Deep Space Stacker) and did some post processing on the images I took the other night. I'm quite happy with the results (the color is much closer to the natural color)

 

(black and white composite)

 

And a close up

Thanks for the reply about the auto tracking and go to. I spent the evening on my deck with friends. I kept looking up and complaining about the light pollution. Going camping next weekend. I'm overly enthusiastic thanks to the pictures.

Thanks for the reply about the auto tracking and go to. I spent the evening on my deck with friends. I kept looking up and complaining about the light pollution. Going camping next weekend. I'm overly enthusiastic thanks to the pictures.

 

No worries. Just keep in mind what your eyes will see will be different than what a camera can pick up. That said, if you're okay with that, you'll still see far more with a telescope with ease than you will with binoculars or your naked eye Don't expect hubble images with the naked eye. But it's still fun to see. The double cluster and the beehive cluster in particular are amazing to look at. With a powerful enough telescope, one of my favorite objects is Messier 13, as it is a globular cluster and can be seen with the naked eye through a telescope.

 

I reprocessed some older pictures with this new software in some black and white revisions. This is the M51 galaxy:

 

Zoomed way in

are there any consumer grade telescopes that would let you see that kind of stuff with the naked eye? nice pics!

 

 

I have this Orion 6" DOB that you can see it with. This I think would be the minimum size you would want.

 

 

http://www.telescope.com/Telescopes/Best-T...75/p/102011.uts

 

 

For $300 it's a damn good starter. In the DOB world, bigger is better though. Don't buy any of that crap sold in retail stores. Also keep in mind that when looking though a scope, all this cool looking stuff is in black in white. If you're expecting bright National Geographic type images you will be let down.

Kerplops hobbies > WheelsRCools hobbies Thats awesome man, great pictures.

 

Well actually, astronomy is a hobby I am planning to dive into soon. There are lots of things about it that interest me, for example DIY telescopes (you can make your own telescopes if you take the time to learn enough), spectroscopy (you can make your own spectroscopy equipment too), radio astronomy (you can make a radio telescope), etc...and of course, astrophotography. You can even build your own observatory.

 

Astronomy is interesting as a science in that it is pretty much the most ancient of all sciences, yet, it is one of the few fields of science that has not become solely the purview of professionals in modern times. Amateur astronomers make contributions to the field all the time and professional astronomers maintain connections with the amateur community because the professionals do not have enough time and/or resources to watch as much of the sky as the grassroots astronomers can.

 

As was mentioned by one reader, a lot of people are unaware of what amateurs can see and do nowadays, but it is because of the advancements made in the technologies. Amateur astronomers can get telescopes, software, computers, etc...that previously were only the purview of the professionals. It is really democratizing astronomy as a result. Makes one wonder what kind of astronomy tech will be available to the average person in another fifty or so years.

 

I think I will hold out on the stone masonry stuff for a bit

And Kerplop, nice pictures and thanks for posting all the information you have

Sweet dude! I'm jealous, you're hobbies are way cooler than mine haha

Took some pictures of Andromeda tonight. A little grainy. 800ISO and everywhere between 8 to 30 second exposures. I don't recall the total time into it, but there's somewhere in the ballpark of 70 stacked photos to make this up. I gotta do something while I wait for the Jalpa to get here

 

It's pretty to look at! But hey at least it's 4 billion years away from colliding with us yeah?

Took some pictures of Andromeda tonight. A little grainy. 800ISO and everywhere between 8 to 30 second exposures. I don't recall the total time into it, but there's somewhere in the ballpark of 70 stacked photos to make this up. I gotta do something while I wait for the Jalpa to get here

 

It's pretty to look at! But hey at least it's 4 billion years away from colliding with us yeah?

 

My new wallpaper

Glad you like it that much! Thanks man

Merry christmas. Orion says hello! I couldn't hang out with family tonight since I work early in the morning so I spent the evening taking pictures of Orion. This was the result.

Merry christmas. Orion says hello! I couldn't hang out with family tonight since I work early in the morning so I spent the evening taking pictures of Orion. This was the result.

 

Wow brother. Love your pictures.

 

Share any else you end up taking.

 

Im a huge astronomy guy

Bumping this for shits and giggles. I bought some processing software so I can do proper color calibration and bring out more detail. Here's some recently reprocessed stuff.

 

Orion Reprocessed (from the picture above)

 

Reprocessing of the M51 spiral galaxy.

 

Here is the Pleiades from a recent photoshoot.

 

And of course, the moon, taken 7/7/2014.

Amazing, I always admired Astrophotography over other subjects.

 

Amazing pictures! Thank you for sharing. And I agree, astrophotography > .

 

Do you post anything on instagram? I would follow your page in a heartbeat

These are absolutely amazing. You could stare at the sky for hours and hours and never get tired.

Love the outcome from the reprocessing. More please.