# 39 | A Simple Shot
Taking your own astrophoto is easier than you may think. All that is necessary is a camera that can take an exposure for 30 seconds, a sturdy tripod, a cable release and fast film.
While on a visit to the Belleville, ON Astronomy Club on July 13th, Carl MacDonald mounted his Pentax K1000 camera equipped with a 50mm lens (set at f2) and Fuji 1600 print film on a tripod and took a 30-second exposure of Sagittarius and the Milky Way.
# 38 | Solar and Satellite Flares
On May 9th, 2002, a small solar flare erupted from the Sun and sent material towards the Earth. Two nights later, the result was this display of the northern lights which Dominic Cantin captured from the Laurentides wildlife reserve in Quebec.
During the aurora an irridium flare occured, which reached a brightness of -6 magnitude. Irridium flares are quite common and are the result of sunlight reflecting off of communication satellites.
Photo Details:
Tripod mounted camera using a 28mm f2.8 lens for a 25 second exposure with Fuji Superia 800 film.
# 37 | The Cone Nebula
NGC 2264, also known as the Cone Nebula, is a spacious region of gas and dust located about 2700 light years away in the constellation Monoceros.
From his observatory in Princeton, Massachusetts, Brian Lula imaged the nebula in January, 2002. After some intense processing, this spectacular image was the result.
Brian uses a Finger Lakes IMG6303E ccd camera and 20" f4 homebuilt Newtonian telescope.
# 36 | "I'll have fries and a partial eclipse to go."
Dennis Deming and some other members of the Fraser Valley Astronomers Society quite often set up their telescopes at a local restaurant in Abbotsford, British Columbia and invite the patrons to views through their scopes. Dennis writes "We never fail to have a good time and the customers as well as the management really enjoy it.".
On June 10, 2002, many were treated to views of the partial solar eclipse by Dennis and his fellow club members.
Photo Details
SkyWatcher short tube 6" refractor on an EQ4 mount with dual axis motor drives using a Badder solar filter with a #12 yellow filter. The camera was a Canon Power Shot S110 and was simply held up to the eyepiece.
# 35 | Globular Cluster M13
Star Party season has arrived in Canada! Richard Fortier attended the Island Star Party near Victoria, BC on Saturday, June 15, 2002 and took this digital image of M13, a beautiful globular cluster in the constellation Hercules.
Richard used his Sony Cyber-shot DSC-F707 digital camera attached to a 40mm eyepiece to take this 30 second shot at the 100-speed setting through a 10" Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope.
# 34 | Partially Eclipsed
For parts of Canada, the partial solar eclipse on June 10, 2002 was beginning just before sunset.
Haze and clouds on the western horizon allowed Steve Barnes to take this unfiltered shot at 8:45pm from Hamilton, Ontario using a Nikon 995 digital camera attached to a Brandon 94mm telescope.
Steve had his digital camera attached to a 35mm TeleVue Panoptic eyepiece and then took a 1/500 of a second shot.
# 33 | M51
M51, also known as the Whirlpool Galaxy, is a spiral galaxy located 35 million light-years away from us.
Paul Zelichowski, using an f4.5 Meade 10" Starfinder on a Losmandy G11 retrofitted with an Astrometric Skywalker 2 GOTO system, took this composite ccd image of M51 from his observatory in Tiverton, Ontario.
Paul's image is a composite of two images; one a low resolution colour and one a high resolution monochrome image.
Image 1: Starlight Xpress MX5C Colour One Shot CCD Camera, 94 X 30 second exposures stacked.
Image 2: Starlight Xpress HX916 CCD Camera, 60 X 1 minute exposures stacked.
The two composites were then combined with RegiStar and Digital Development/Unsharp Mask with Maxim.
# 32 | Jupiter
Until a few years ago when film was the only option, getting decent planetary images quite often ended up being an exercise in futility. With the advancement of computer programs and electronic imaging equipment, good results can be achieved with gear readily available in most computer stores and by using image processing programs.
On January 28, 2002, from his backyard in Oshawa, Ontario, Len Benschop took several images of Jupiter through his 8" Celestron Ultima 2000 telescope using a Toucam Pro ccd camera and a 2x barlow.
Len then took the best images and combined them using AstroVideo, AVI2BMP, Astrostack and PaintShop 4 to achieve this final image of Jupiter.
# 31 | Copernicus
Our Moon presents a never-ending object to observe night after night. Subtle changes in shadows can even occur over the course of an evening's observing.
Roger Hill, from his backyard observatory in Milton, Ontario, used an unmodified Philips Vesta Pro webcam attached to his Celestron C8 Schmidt Cassegrain telescope on May 21, 2002 to take this image of the crater Copernicus.
Roger used the computer program Registax and combined 303 images that he took that night to make this one image.
# 30 | Sunspots
While the majority of observers use their telescopes for viewing nighttime objects, there are many that realize that our Sun is a constantly changing and interesting object to observe during the day.
When the Sun is observed with a proper solar filter, sunspots, some larger than the Earth, can easily be seen. This image shows 4 large groupings of sunspots.
Sayuri Kubota and Richard Fortier used a Sony Cyber-shot DSC-F707 in the 100 speed setting to take this 1/500 second shot with a 40mm eyepiece on 4-inch refractor equiped with a proper solar filter at 11:30 am (PDT) on April 20th, 2002.