Hi PDO Astronerds! Would like to exchange experiences with any of you who have treaded this path before. If you have, please give me a call. Here are some of my puny attempts with an 8" Celestron Ultima 2000 SCT and Fuji 800 colour print film, taken at home in Ras al Hamra. All photos below simply scanned from prints made by Photocenter at CCC. Not exactly hi-tec. I found that my main headache was mirror flap when using a Canon EOS camera; lost my entire first roll of film through camera shake. Switched to a different camera (an old, cheap Konica SLR). Anyone had better success with Canon EOS's? Mine does not have a mirror pre-release. Neither does the Konica, but it's much more compact and lighter.
 

 Half MoonMoon taken at prime focus (f/10, focal length 2030 mm)
Photos below taken using eyepiece projection (7mm Nagler). @ f/121, equivalent focal length 24100 mm!). Camera shake becomes serious business!
In fact I could not use the camera shutter at all and had to resort to "hat trick" method. I found that this magnification has reached both the resolution limit of my scope and is at the seeing limit for most nights at Ras al Hamra. Simply too much shimmer. Shimmer can be clearly seen on video shots I made. Still waiting for that clear, still night! Since exposure using a hat (actually I was using a tray) can't be much shorter than a second or so, seeing conditions become very critical. To appreciate the magnification, photos below were taken immediately after the one above. See if you can find the locations on the big photo.
 Moon3
The picture below is the same as the previous image above, but rotated so that mountains are right-side up, as we are normally used to.
Notice the strange psychology of upside-down mountains in the previous image. Now you know why Australians talk differently!
Moon3
For the same reason, next photo is rotated. The location is actually near the bottom of the large Moon photo, i.e. region with upside-down mountains.Moon2

Jupiter with 3 moons visible, taken at f/33 (equivalent focal length of 6500 mm)
 

Jupiter taken at f/121 (equivalent focal length of 24100 mm)Jupiter
Saturn taken at f/121 (equivalent focal length of 24100 mm) Saturn
Notice you can just about make out the Cassini Division. While one can see it fairly clearly visually though the scope, with all the atmospheric shimmer and the 2 second exposure required, it's tough to capture it sharply on film. Again, also at the resolution limit of my scope. Anybody had success with using a video camera? I tried it out but it's rather difficult to hold the thing and image steady. So I am still a very long way from making better prints from video freeze frames. Another headache I had was to get prints of the right density from the chap at Photocenter. Only way was to ask him to print each photo at 4 densities and choose the best.
Also interested in hearing from anybody who has tried deep sky photography, with the long exposures and guiding. Perhaps somebody has tried out some fast CCD? Celestron advertises this clever Fastar device to convert my scope to f/1.95 and with a CCD, deep sky should be doable in less than a minute! At least that's the advert. Any experience with that?


The Grandeur of Orion
Our home page | Britt & Marijne | Noorwegen 1998
Oman: PDO | Faces of Oman | Diving | Stars | Wahiba Sands | Salalah trip
Sinterklaas 1998 | Sport hal | Kruyschrackers
Hosted by www.Geocities.ws

1