Posts Tagged ‘image’

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Astronomy is contagious!

April 29, 2013

by yaska77

The great thing about astronomy is that anyone with a sky over their heads can get involved. You don’t need a truckload of expensive gear, just an interest and a modicum of patience will get you a long way!

Soon after I got my camera and started posting images on this blog, Mick Judd (a talented photographer who I happen to work with) also began skywatching, and he has captured some great shots with limited “astro-specific” equipment.

After we recently discussed the upcoming penumbral eclipse on 25th April (see our images here) Mick went home and over the course of a few evenings has produced the following short video, which we hope you enjoy.

We think it’s great, and just the sort of thing we hope will help others catch the astronomy bug! But how did he do it?  I’ll let him explain that himself!

“To capture the images I used two different eyepieces on a D=60mm F=700mm telescope; an H20 to fit the whole of the moon in the frame and an HF6 for the close-ups of the lunar surface and for Saturn. To attach the camera (a Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc S mobile phone) I drilled a hole in the middle of a plastic lid from a can of hair mousse, and glued it around the lens hole on the phone’s protective case.

Slotting the plastic lid over the eyepiece housing on the telescope and pushing it into place, it’s then a bit of hit and miss with lining up what I can see in the finder scope with what I can see on the phone’s display. The Xperia Arc S has a lot of camera settings so it’s just a matter of adjusting EV levels and using a bit of digital zoom to fill the frame to avoid seeing the round edge of the eyepiece.

To try and make sure that I capture something that is sharp I slightly tweak the scope’s focus every now and then between shots. The Sunspots were viewed through an additionally fitted Solar filter.  All the footage in the video was captured between 15th and 27th April 2013.”

Top work Judd bloke, and an ingenious set up!

You can see more of Mick’s photos on his Flickr page here

Now everyone get outdoors and enjoy the night sky! :)

Posted in Astronomy, Blog gallery, Eclipse, Moon, Saturn, Sun, yaska77 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

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Hubble eyes up comet ISON

April 24, 2013

by yaska77

Billed as possibly the “comet of the century”, C/2012 S1 ISON has recently found itself in the sights of the Hubble Space Telescope. Still too far away to be seen by the naked eye, what has been exciting astronomers about ISON is its potential to become briefly brighter than a full Moon as it makes its closest approach to the Sun around the 28th of November.

hs-2013-14-a-large_web

Even at a distance of 386 million miles from the Sun, comet ISON is being warmed causing sublimation, the creation of its tail (click to enlarge) – Credit: NASA, ESA, J.-Y. Li (Planetary Science Institute), and the Hubble Comet ISON Imaging Science Team

The comet’s dusty coma, or head of the comet, is approximately 3,100 miles across, or 1.2 times the width of Australia. A dust tail extends more than 57,000 miles, far beyond Hubble’s field of view.

More careful analysis of the image (captured on 10th April) is currently underway to improve these measurements and help predict the possible outcome of the sungrazing passage of this comet, but the formation of a tail while still so far from the Sun could mean ISON breaks up before putting on the show we all want it to!

ISON was discovered in September 2012 by the Russian-led International Scientific Optical Network using a 16-inch telescope.

Source: Hubblesite.org

Posted in Astronomy, Comet, Hubble, yaska77 | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

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Hubble’s eXtreme view of the Universe

September 26, 2012

by yaska77

When it comes to looking into and imaging the past, the Hubble Space Telescope continues to produce shots of breathtaking wonder.

Called the eXtreme Deep Field, or XDF, the image below was assembled by combining 10 years of NASA Hubble Space Telescope photographs taken of a patch of sky at the center of the original Hubble Ultra Deep Field.

Astronomers have assembled a new, improved portrait of mankind’s deepest-ever view of the universe (click to enlarge) – Credit: NASA; ESA; G. Illingworth, D. Magee, and P. Oesch, University of California, Santa Cruz; R. Bouwens, Leiden University; and the HUDF09 Team

The Hubble Ultra Deep Field is an image of a small area of space in the constellation Fornax (latin for Furnace) located in the southern sky, far away from the glare of the Milky Way, and was created using Hubble Space Telescope data from 2003 and 2004.

By collecting faint light over many hours of observation (around 500 hours) it revealed thousands of galaxies, both nearby and very distant, making it the deepest image of the universe ever taken.

A finger held at arm’s length would appear to be about twice the width of the moon in this image (click to enlarge) – Credit: NASA/ESA and Z. Levay, STScI; Moon Image Credit: T. Rector/I. Dell’Antonio/NOAO/AURA/NSF

The new full-color XDF image contains about 5,500 galaxies even within its smaller field of view. The faintest galaxies are one ten-billionth the brightness of what the human eye can see.

The history of galaxies – from soon after the first galaxies were born to the great galaxies of today, like our Milky Way – is laid out in this one amazing image.

Garth Illingworth of the University of California at Santa Cruz (principal investigator of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field program) said, “The XDF is the deepest image of the sky ever obtained and reveals the faintest and most distant galaxies ever seen. XDF allows us to explore further back in time than ever before”.

It should certainly keep astronomers busy for a while, at least until the James Webb Space Telescope launches! With it’s specialised infrared instruments it is expected to find even fainter galaxies that existed when the universe was just a few hundred million years old.

You can read more details on the NASA Hubble Website here.  Galactic!

Source: NASA

Posted in Astronomy, ESA, Galaxy, Hubble, Image gallery, NASA, Space, yaska77 | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments »

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Warming up to the Perseid show

August 11, 2012

by yaska77

As you probably know, the annual Perseid meteor shower peaks this evening (check our monthly guide for some more info) but because it was clear last night I set up my camera in the garden, more out of hope than expectation.

My history of trying to photograph meteors has been sketchy at best (see last years attempt here) but last night I was left grinning like a cheshire cat!

18mm focal length, f/3.5, 15 sec exposure at ISO1600 – This is easily the best meteor photo i’ve taken (click to enlarge) – Credit: Sky-Watching/A.Welbourn

I approach photography with a “try lots of settings and see” kind of attitude, and I’ve found what works initially may not look as good an hour later (light pollution quite often gives me orange skies if I don’t pay attention). Normally I wouldn’t have the ISO as high as 1600 for long exposure star shots, but anything lower was producing too much of an orange tint.

Still, I’m very pleased with the shot above, lots of stars, a bright Perseid meteor flash and it’s not too faded.  The other shots I caught weren’t as clear, but one did stand out as the meteor flashed by a cool little cluster that you can’t usually see with the naked eye (unless you’re lucky enough to have dark skies!)

Another Perseid meteor flashes past Brocchi’s Cluster (the upside down coat hanger!) in this cropped image from early on 11th August 2012 (click to enlarge) – Credit: Sky-Watching/A.Welbourn

Brocchi’s Cluster can be found within the imagined lines of the “Summer Triangle“, about a third of the way from Altair in a straight line to Vega.  It’s also known as the “Coathanger” for obvious reasons!

And so on to this evening.  My camera’s batteries are charging, the tripod is ready and the weather forecast is (currently) still favourable, so I’m planning a little trip out of town tonight to slightly darker skies. It’s building up to be a good show, and if I get any more images I’ll post them here!

And if you capture any photos of your own, please feel free to tweet them to us as we’d love to see them!

Enjoy the show :)

Posted in Astronomy, Blog gallery, Meteor, Night sky, yaska77 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

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Opportunity Rover provides HD Martian panorama

July 8, 2012

by yaska77

NASA recently released a panoramic image of the Martian landscape, taken by its Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity while it was stationary for four months of work during its most recent Martian winter.

This full-circle scene combines 817 images taken by Opportunity’s panoramic camera (click to enlarge) Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/Arizona State Univ.

Compiled of 817 individual images at full resolution it is a sight to behold! The detail is astounding and about as close as any of us will ever come to experiencing “the red planet” first hand.

Click above to see a reduced size image (40% of the original) or the link below to download the full resolution monster (it’s a whopping 23096 x 7981 pixels!) and get more information direct from the NASA website.

Incredible image :)

Take me to Mars!

Posted in Astronomy, Image gallery, Mars, NASA, yaska77 | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

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