Wesley's Tool-Box

Just before taking photos of the Orion Nebula on November 12, I pointed my telescope to get some images of the Andromeda Galaxy. This was, of course, in hopes of getting better results than a week ago. And as you can see, there were indeed some improvements. Details near the core are more noticeable, and a part of the outer "ring" is starting to get visible on the lower left if you look with a bright monitor. Still, it seems that I need even darker skies to get a clearer photo of this galaxy.

FYI, the tiny galaxy to the left of the Andromeda Galaxy is Messier 32. If you click on the picture for a larger view, you can see another galaxy, Messier 110, at the bottom right as a fain blob.

Telescope: Celestron NexStar 6SE + f/6.3 focal reducer
Device: Sony A5000 (prime focus)
Settings: (945mm) - ISO 1250 - 30s - (f/6.3)
Filters: None (3 photos) + Baader M&S (2 photos)
Time: 2015-11-12 00:06-00:19 KST
Location: Naju, Korea
5 photos stacked with Deep Sky Stacker 3.3.4

Earlier this year, I took photographs of the Orion Nebula, a.k.a. Messier 42, with the Canon SX50 HS camera or with Tamron 18-270mm lens attached to the Canon 450D. This was before I got my Celestron telescope, so I had high hopes of getting even better photos once the telescope was in my hands. Alas, the Orion constellation was already hiding below the horizon before midnight at this point, so I was focused in planetary targets most of the time.


As winter times creeped up again, the constellation was again viewable in the late night to early morning. That is, if the clouds, rain, or fog weren't obscuring it. This happened in the early hours of November 12, so I brought my telescope outside for a couple of hours of astrophotography. While I snapped several targets, the Orion Nebula looked the most promising.


As the conditions were good, I took the photos mostly without any filters. Then I took a few with the Baader Moon & Skyglow filter on to see what difference it might make. Once I started post-processing, I could see that the one with the filter might have a slight advantage in bringing out the faint details, but nothing dramatic. With the individual frames ready, I used the Deep Sky Stacker for the first time for automatic selection and stacking.

After about an hour of processing, the software selected five frames from non-filtered ones and one from the filtered ones to deliver this beautiful result. If you click on the photo for a wider, larger view, you can spot a part of the reflection nebula NGC1977 at the top left as well. In the future I may try to get this properly into the frame.

Telescope: Celestron NexStar 6SE + f/6.3 focal reducer
Device: Sony A5000 (prime focus)
Settings: (945mm) - ISO 1250 - 30s - (f/6.3)
Filters: None (5 photos) + Baader M&S (1 photo)
Time: 2015-11-12 00:51-01:14 KST
Location: Naju, Korea
6 photos stacked with Deep Sky Stacker 3.3.4

With the recent purchase of Celestron f/6.3 focal reducer (as mentioned in The Toon-Box) and the fine-tuning of the secondary mirror collimation, I've been quite eager to do some deep sky photography. Alas, the autumn sky at Naju has not been very cooperative.

For some reason, the days without clouds experienced thick fogs (and possibly smogs) and the days without fogs experienced cloudy sky. As the former at least provided some visibility near the zenith and because the constellation of Andromeda is currently very high up in the evening, the Andromeda Galaxy became the obvious target when the opportunity came.

The best three photos from the shooting session were manually stacked and processed, resulting in what you see above. It seems that the fog blocked much of the structural details of the galaxy, but you can still see a bit of it near the core. Also, the satellite galaxy known as Messier 32 (M32) are clearly visible in the bottom as well. I'll be trying on the Moon & Skyglow filter under a better weather condition to see if I can improve upon this.

(Note: M32 was misidentified as M110 earlier, and has now been corrected)

Telescope: Celestron NexStar 6SE + f/6.3 focal reducer
Device: Sony A5000 (prime focus)
Settings: (945mm) - ISO 1000 - 30s - (f/6.3)
Filters: None
Time: 2015-11-03 20:25-20:45 KST
Location: Naju, Korea
3 photos stacked

Not content to just photograph planets, I tried my luck at catching glimpse of some of the Messier objects that came into the southern view. After trying various high ISO settings, it seemed that ISO 3200 is as far as I could push my A5000 for where I live before too much details were lost. And under this setting, Messier 2 and 11 came out looking fairly well.


Messier 2 is a globular cluster, as it is a group of stars that are tightly bound together in a bright round ('globe') shape. Meanwhile, Messier 11 (Wild Duck Cluster) is an open cluster, a more loosely packed group of stars that still stand out from the background. They seem to be very good examples for A5000 to shoot for their respective category. I've taken photos of several other Messier objects that are star clusters, but these looked the best.

Telescope: Celestron NexStar 6SE
Device: Sony A5000 (prime focus)
Settings: (1500mm) - ISO 3200 - 30s - (f/10)
Filters: None
Location: Naju, Korea

M2: 2015-09-19 23:08 - 09-20 00:14 KST (2 photos stacked)
M11: 2015-09-19 21:20-21:38 KST (2 photos stacked)

It seems that I get to see a "great" transit of the ISS in front of the Sun once every year, with the space station appearing large enough to make it look like the letter H. This time, CalSky was predicting a nearly perfect condition at Naju, a near-center pass with an apparent diameter of more than one arc minute (63.1"). With the weather cooperating, I did not want to miss it.

To make sure I did not miss anything, I took out both my Celestron telescope with the smartphone adapter and my SX50 HS camera. I was hoping that at least one of them would catch the occurrence. I hurried with the setup and had everything ready just barely. I let my iPhone 6 Plus start recording the view through the eyepiece of the telescope in 240fps slow motion video, and pushed the shutter on my SX50 HS in continuous shoot mode, all mere moments before the transit.


The SX50 HS captured just one frame, which was sort of expected. The quality was easily better than my previous attempts thanks to the large apparent size. But the real deal was in the iPhone 6 Plus. It had captured 80 frames of the ISS in motion in total, with each frame besting the SX50 HS's efforts. The 240fps video capture truly shined, creating this smooth slow motion video as a result.


Here's the stacked and post-processed composite of the video in a single picture; click it to see it in full resolution. You can appreciate the details of the ISS and the sunspot AR 12339 quite better this way. If you look at the space station up close as seen in the first picture of this post, it's good enough to identify its major features. I've marked them for your convenience.

Telescope: Celestron NexStar 6SE + 25mm eyepiece + 2.5x barlow
Device: iPhone 6 Plus (afocal)
Settings: 29mm - 1280x720 - 240fps - f/2.2
Filters: None
Time: 2015-05-10 13:33:58 KST
Location: Naju, Korea
Stacked with RegiStax 6.1.0.8
- #1: 12 photos
- #2: 10 photos (ISS, each) / 100 photos (Sun)