DirkSteele

Oh and spot M44 near the base of the zodiacal light.

While on holiday last year on Benguerra Island in Mozambique I did plenty of stargazing with my Tak FC-76 but I also could not resist some wide field shots of the night sky. Early during our two week stay I was capturing some shots of the evening Zodiacal Light (annoyingly bright BTW when observing in that part of the sky) and a lady walked past me on the beach wearing a cocktail dress. Slightly unusual on a island in the Indian Ocean. She walked about another 30 metres and then used the torch on her phone to signal a large boat moored slightly out to sea. A few seconds later they flashed back and then set off in a small speedboat to pick her up. It was all captured during the 25 second exposure I had running. 14mm lens at f/2.8 and ISO 3,200 on unmodified Canon 70D.

That is what I was think as well.

Stephen James O'Meara is known to hyperventialte to enhance his low light senstivity. I have contemplated wearing a eyepatch like a pirate (they are in this year!😉) over my observing eye when using either a torch and charts or apps on a phone to preserve my night vision. Guess we all need to up our game.

How is it, despite all the times I have viewed M33 I have never bothered to consider what that bright condensation is? Guess what I am doing next time M33 is in the eyepiece! set to the same magnitude +16 limit, less than M31 but still a few for the dedicated to hunt down.

Its on my iPhone so definitely useable in the field. You can even set the phone to have permanent red screen now so you do not harm night vision when first switching on the phone. I don't really use a paper star atlas in the field anymore since you could do that.

Not sure about a book but Sky Safari Pro has a lot of them in its database. The screen grab is set to magnitude +16. I do love chasing down DSOs in other galaxies though I have only done with the SMC and LMC which are a fair bit closer! Hope this helps.

Thanks. Just used a static tripod. On the full image which is more than 12,000 x 4,500 pixels a small amount of trailing can be seen but the stitching seems to have minimised it.

That will serve you well. Happy hunting under dark skies.

On our final night on Benguerra Island last July the ISS had a low pass under the Southern Cross, Coal Sack Nebula and the Carina region of the Milky Way. Considering this was probably only 25-30 mins after sunset and with a first quarter moon in the sky, and very few stars were visible, quite surprised how many were revealed when I stacked the 8 images here, which catch the ISS passing behind a palm tree. Shot with an unmodified Canon 70D and 14mm lens.

Would definitely like to have a play with one of these. Looks great.

I love the look of this scope. An elegant charm of a bygone era of astronomy. That the optics are good only adds to the allure.

Good spot. Andromeda just creeps in on the far right. This is a stitch of 10 images. Used Photoshop to combine and then processed in Lightroom.

And yes it has taken me almost a year to get round to stitching and processing!

Being a hardcore visual observer I think this might be the first time I have started a topic in the imaging section of SGL. But I do sometimes point a camera for wide field shots of the sky. However this is my first attempt at a panorama. Taken on holiday last year on Benguerra Island in Mozambique in mid July around 3:30am, this is a stitch of 10 photos from the beach in front of our villa. Shot using an unmodified Canon 70D and 14mm lens at f/2.8, ISO 3,200, 25 sec exposures.

Website looks good and there is some great content.

This one is definitely up my street.

Can vary from session to session. Sometimes it maybe as short as an hour (not always due to weather) just for a quick look, and there have been a fair number of dusk till dawn observing runs. One memorable night in Namibia ran from about 7pm till 6am the next morning. That was a fun night. Start times also vary. Often it will be during nautical dark in the evening and perhaps earlier if planetary is the goal, not needing a fully dark sky. But if I have a specific target or region of sky I want to explore it can be any time of the night which best places those objects of interest. If you are getting up at 2am however, it does require a slightly understanding partner who won’t be grumpy at an alarm in the wee hours.

That is an elegant looking scope.

Turn Left at Orion is also a beginners book that many, including myself, think is a great intro to the hobby of stargazing.

Your collection becomes yet more impressive.

In the public consciousness all telescopes are refractors. Which means eyepiece at the bottom. Next exhibit in the evidence for such a claim. The Iberia Airlines business class magazine from 2016.

Fortunately nothing terrible has happened to my equipment though I have heard scopes crash to the ground at star parties thanks to a sudden gust of wind. However, I did experience one heart stopping moment with one of the university scopes. It was during my masters astrophysics project (photometry of T-Tauri stars) and my project partner and I were in the warm room controlling the data capture. The system was not completely remotely controlled. Pointing was done at the scope but the dome and camera were controlled from the warm room. We had just completed a data run on one star and were moving onto the next. Fortunately no one had gone back to the dome to move the telescope on, but I decided to nudge the dome opening on to roughly the next stop (we had become very familiar with the relative positions of all our target stars). Hit the button to move and the top began to move and then B.A.N.G!!! Sounded like a gun going off. The dome was moved by series of motors and high tension cables and one had failed quite spectacularly. Rushing over to the dome, cables had ripped out all over the place, one even wrapping round the scope. Immediately ran back to the warm room and called our project supervisor who drove in. Took us about an hour to untangle everything and close up the dome. Luckily repairs were made quite quickly and the scope was up and running in only a few days. But just in that moment, our hearts skipped a beat. But I got a first for the project so alls well that ends well! 😉

I would actually like to see the introduction of technologies already in existence, to the amateur astronomy community. Astronomy is all about contrast and we have black paint, knife edge baffles, some flock their scopes. But none of that match the light absorbing qualities of VantaBlack. It’s about time it was used in telescopes. Canon have developed Blue Spectrum Refractive Optics which is an organic compound which allows for better control of deep blue light reducing longitudinal chromatic aberration. Would be interesting to see that applied to refractors.

Great video.