Wesley's Tool-Box

Since my last observation of the Comet C/2014 Q2 Lovejoy, I waited for the sky to clear up again so that I can try shooting with a star tracker (iOptron SkyTracker) installed. The opportunity came on the night of January 8. Annoyingly, all the attempts to take long exposure photos failed. I first thought the tracker may be faulty, but later I realized that the image stabilization on the camera lens was negating the tracker's movement.

I vowed to not make the same mistake again, and two days later, I went out to take photos of the comet once more. The southern sky was dark enough to let me barely see the comet with my naked eyes, so my hopes were up. And indeed, I finally got the results I wanted - much improved photos of the comet using the 30-second exposure (longest possible on Canon 450D other than bulb mode) setting. The green glow was now evident, and the center of the comet was shining brightly.

For the reference, the comet had moved to near the constellation of Taurus - the large version of the photo shows the magnitude 5 star 40 Tauri on the far upper left. Also, under the camera settings I used, the darkest stars were around magnitude 12, which is the most sensitive I've gotten out of my astrophotography attempts so far.


After taking the photos of the comet, I felt that it would be nice to point the camera at another object since the tracking setup was already in place. As the sky at my location was especially dark in the east and the south, I decided to take a look at the Orion Nebula inside the Orion constellation, which was in the east, going south.

Alas, due to being out for more than an hour in the below-freezing coldness, the infinity focus of the lens wasn't working quite right anymore and the fog on the lens was getting bad. So I took some measures to mitigate these issues somewhat and was able to salvage several shots before heading home. Luckily, those shots came out looking fine.

Device: Canon EOS 450D + Tamron 18-270mm Di II VC PZD
Settings: 432mm - ISO 800 - 30s - f/6.3
Filters: None
Location: Naju, Korea

[Comet]
Time: 2015-01-10 21:39 KST (21:25-21:52)
12 photos stacked with RegiStax 6.1.0.8

[Nebula]
Time: 2015-01-10 22:26 KST (22:07-22:31)
7 photos stacked with RegiStax 6.1.0.8

Australian amateur astronomer Lovejoy's 5th comet, C/2014 Q2, is coming closest to Earth on January 7, 2015, and it has been getting brighter in the recent weeks. On a clear dark sky, it's currently bright enough to be seen with a pair of binoculars, as its magnitude is around 5. The sky at Naju cleared up last Friday night, so I went out to take some photos of this comet.

When I took the photos, the comet was near 60 Eridani, a 5.0 magnitude star in the constellation Eridanus, which made it easier to position the camera by hand. You can see the C/2014 Q2 as a fuzzy, slightly green ball here. The faint star above the comet is TYC 5899-440-1, a 9.6 magnitude star. The faintest stars in the photo are around magnitude 10.0.

This was the first time I used my Canon EOS 450D DSLR to take celestial photos since the Venus transit of 2012. The job was relegated to SX50 HS in 2013, but unless I'm taking photos of the planets or satellites, I felt that the larger sensor would work better, so I took the 450D out of storage for this session. It seems to have paid off. I had to resort to a relatively short (2.5 seconds) exposure because I didn't use the star tracker this time, but I still had good results.

Device: Canon EOS 450D + Tamron 18-270mm Di II VC PZD
Settings: 394mm - ISO 1600 - 2.5s - f/6.3
Filters: None
Time: 2015-01-02 22:48-22:51 KST
Location: Naju, Korea
14 photos stacked with RegiStax 6.1.0.8

The roof of the new KPX headquarters at Bitgaram City in Naju is dubbed "Sky Park", so I thought it might be an interesting spot to photograph celestial objects. It is surrounded by small windows, obscuring low altitudes, but a good place otherwise. On the evening of the day after Christmas, a flyover of the International Space Station was expected on a clear sky, so I brought my Canon SX50 HS camera to the roof.

It was very windy and cold, and my bare hands holding the shutter button began to feel numb almost immediately. Luckily, the ISS began to appear on the western sky, so I pointed the camera towards it, helped by the iPhone 6 Plus mounted on the hot-shoe. In the span of about 3 minutes, I was able to take roughly 400 photos of the space station, of which 40% was in good state.

The 25 best shots can be seen here, starting at 18:37:00 and ending at 18:39:44, at about 7-second intervals. During most of the visible flyover time, ISS was turned on its "back", and then "rotated around" around 18:39:00, only to disappear about a minute after. The turnaround point was when it was closest to the observer, about 560km away. The animated version with each frame 5 seconds apart should illustrate this quite nicely.

What I like about this observation is that the ISS was captured on camera more clearly than most of the attempts made in Suwon, except for the direct overhead pass last year. The morning flyover photographed last March shows the opposite turnaround, but was much blurrier. The difference is quite noticeable. Looks like I'll be able to enjoy doing astrophotography even more at this new location.

Device: Canon SX50 HS
Settings: 1200mm (2x enlarged) - ISO 80 - 1/320s - f/6.5
Filters: None
Time: 2014-12-26 18:37 - 18:40 KST
Location: Naju, Korea

With iOS 8, apps can now provide individual manual control of ISO, shutter speed, focus, exposure, and white balance using public API. Apps that take advantage of this can bring fine-grained control of the cameras on the iPhone, a much sought feature by the users especially since iPhone's cameras perform so well. Now, there's a bit of problem with low light mode in iPhone 6 Plus, but that's another story.

The story here is that I used the iPhone 6 Plus camera on manual settings to take a photo of the Moon that's showing through a pair of Bushnell Birding Series 8x40 binoculars. Without them, the Moon would have come out as a tiny blob about 25 pixels wide. I held up the phone to the ocular lens by hand. It's not as impressive as the 50x zoom photos that my Canon SX50 HS can take, but it give me hope that some low-magnification astrophotography could be done with my iPhone with some clever apps and a clamp that can fix the phone to the binoculars.

Device: iPhone 6 Plus & Bushnell Birding Series 8x40
Settings : 29mm - ISO 50 - 1/125s - f/2.2
Filters: None
Time : 2014-11-03 01:34 KST
Location: Naju, Korea

Lunar eclipses happen every year, so it's not particularly rare. But they're not always total eclipses. In fact, the last total lunar eclipse in Korea happened in 2011. So this time around, I got myself fully ready to take some nice photos of the event with my superzoom camera, Canon SX50 HS.

On October 8, the Moon was to rise from due east on 17:59 and the eclipse was to start right after at 18:14, but the building next to my workplace was blocking the view. So after the work hours were over, I headed to a nearby overpass and set up my tripod near the center. I was able to start seeing the Moon getting behind the Earth's shadow, but just as I started taking the photos, heavy clouds started to block the view. It was frustrating, but I waited out.