Since my interest in astro-photography began my excitement
has been continusly growing. What is only a tiny foggy blur in the eyepiece
becomes a mysterious work of art from the heavens. At present my favorite
are nebulae and spiral galaxies. While M42 of Orion looks wonderful with the 2000mm f10 8 inch SCT through a 26mm Plossl eyepiece, it still leaves much unseen. Pictures on the cover of cheap telescopes boxes and in magazines are not representative of what one can actually see through a telescope.
The CCD astro camera pulls in so much more detail in either black &
white or color. The longer the exposures before saturation the better the image. I usually do many unguided 60 second exposures of any given space object and add the better images together. i will add a page on the details of ccd imageing later. these pages include my work from january 99 to date.
All images are taken with the Celestron Pixcel 237 camera and Celestron Celestar 8-inch Deluxe Schmidt-Cassegrain Optical Tupe Assembly (ota). Focal ratios are f10, f6.3 and f1.95 with the Fastar lens adapter for a wider field of view. The color images are with the CFW5 inhanced internal (Red, Green, Blue, Clear) RGBC color wheel.
Below are images of Nebulae ,
Galaxies and Planets. Try varying the brightness and contrast of your monitor for more or less detail.
New Messier Marathon CCD / GOTO style.
Lower left Mars image inhanced to better match the expected color.
September 25, 2005 - MARS - 6/11/2.1k
MARS 4/10/99 JUPITER 10/7/99 SATURN 2/02/99
Back
to Don's home.
© , 1998, 2007
Last edited:10/16/2006, by Don Lewis, Wye Mountain Observatory