topic Re: Heart of America Star Party in EF & RF Lenses

Heart of America Star Party

ebiggs1 — Thu, 17 Oct 2013 01:05:29 GMT

My friend did it again. He is amazing.This photo was taken at the Heart of America Star Party of comet Ison.

If you would like to see more of Tom's work check out his blog spot.

Tom J Martinez
http://tomjmartinez.blogspot.com/

Re: Heart of America Star Party

TCampbell — Thu, 17 Oct 2013 17:27:03 GMT

Gorgeous! A friend of mine got a photo of it about a week ago using his telescope, but I like this wide-field image with a nice star field.

Re: Heart of America Star Party

ebiggs1 — Thu, 17 Oct 2013 19:29:47 GMT

Tom is a genius. Way better than me. One thing he has more patience. I think he said this photo was 20 images stacked.

He is also a very good teacher and willing to share his secrets.

Re: Heart of America Star Party

TCampbell — Thu, 17 Oct 2013 23:30:24 GMT

I've been working on my astrophotography and trying to get better at it. We have a number of astroimagers in my astronomy club (a much higher percentage than any other club I'm aware of). The club has two astrophotography special interest groups and these guys are amazing.

I've managed to get MUCH better at image acquisition and can now take fairly long guided images (usually) without a problem. But I have a very long way to go on learning to do image processing.

Here is a somewhat recent (about a month ago I think) image that I did of the dumbbell nebula.

This was captured using a Canon 60Da and a TeleVue 2x Powermate with a Celestron C14 SCT (14" scope). It's an f/11 telescope but with the 2x powermate it effectively becomes an f/22. It was 16 "light" frames, each of which was 4 minutes long and 8 "dark" frames.

What I did _not_ have (and really needed) was "flat" frames... you can see the somewhat muddy background which fades to black as you get toward the corners. There are also a spot likely caused by dust which I presume was on the sensor (I subsequently cleaned the sensor.)

Re: Heart of America Star Party

ebiggs1 — Fri, 18 Oct 2013 13:54:06 GMT

That is still a nice image of something that is not easy to get. It is a long way from the olden days of freezing you film to crease ISO. I am fully aware of Celestron telescopes.

If you would like to, get a hold of Tom, you can tell him I sent you, as he is a wealth of knowledge in astro-photography and a willing teacher. Like I said way better than I am. He will share any techniques he uses. He is a published photographer in the astronomy world, so your friends that are really into astro-photography should know of him.