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

With my company's relocation, I've moved from Suwon to Naju. This city is about 300km south of Seoul, and has less than 100 thousand inhabitants. So the night sky is somewhat more favourable to stargazing. It isn't a dramatic improvement, but I'm happy to be able to continue doing astrophotography. To celebrate the arrival, I did a 10-minute exposure just outside the apartment window. The star trails came out nicely.


The following night, I tried taking a photo of the Andromeda Galaxy. It was to be expected, but the background had less light, in spite of the Moon shining brightly nearby. The resulting photo came out looking better than anything I've tried in Suwon. I have some high hopes for taking some good photos during the new Moon phase. But for now, I'm hoping to get some good view of the lunar eclipse happening in two days.

Device: Canon SX50 HS
Settings #1: 24mm (17% size) - ISO 80 - 600s - f/3.4
Settings #2: 263mm (26% size) - ISO 160 - 300s - f/5.6
Filters: None
Time #1: 2014-10-05 01:25 KST
Time #2: 2014-10-05 23:35 KST
Location: Naju, Korea

On the second attempt to photograph Bode's Galaxy (M81) and Cigar Galaxy (M82), I managed to put the lens hood on. The sky itself wasn't really darker - in fact, quarter moon was up in the sky - but this seem to have reduced the background red glare from the street lights. I should have thought of this sooner.

Anyways, the images now have blacker background, making the galaxies look more clear and natural. Taking multiple shots and stacking them improved the looks even further. Click on the image to see the version in original resolution.

Device: Canon SX50 HS
Settings: 484mm (70% size) - ISO 100 - 300s - f/5.6
Filters: None
Time: 2014-05-06 23:29 to 2014-05-07 00:15 KST
Location: Suwon, Korea
8 photos stacked with RegiStax 6.1.0.8

Using the iOptron SkyTracker equatorial mount, tracking the galaxies for photographing became somewhat better, despite a murky city sky. While photographing Vesta and Ceres, I also pointed the camera to where Bode's Galaxy (Messier 81) and Cigar Galaxy (Messier 82) were located just below constellation Ursa Major. Although they were fairly dim (magnitude 6.9 and 8.4, respectively), I hoped that it would at least show up in the picture faintly.

After much fiddling with the camera settings and post-processing, the best result I got out of it is the one you see here. Both galaxies' shapes are recognizable, despite this being just a single-frame 5-minute exposure. When the weather becomes favourable again, I'll attempt multiple shots with the same camera settings and see if this will help out further.

Device: Canon SX50 HS
Settings: 484mm (80% size) - ISO 100 - 300s - f/5.6
Filters: None
Time: 2014-04-25 00:40 KST
Location: Suwon, Korea

I've recently bought a motorized equatorial mount called iOptron SkyTracker, which enables the camera to track the stars at the same speed as they move in the sky. This is useful for photographing faint objects through long exposures. But since the light pollution in the city sky hinders long exposure photography in the first place, I was unsure whether this would be of much use.

To see that the mount works as intended and is still useful under an uncooperative sky, I decided to try photographing two kinds things - asteroids and galaxies. For asteroids, the two brightest, Vesta and Ceres, were chosen. They were close to each other while moving in the constellation Virgo, between Arcturus and Mars, in the southern sky around midnight. Ceres is also a dwarf planet, so I would be photographing two types of celestial body at once.

For three nights (April 21-22, 23-24, and 24-25), I photographed the area just above Zeta Virginis (a.k.a. Heze) to catch the movement of two objects. The SkyTracker mount was used on the first and third night because the sky was clear, but the second night was riddled with fog in the lower sky, hindering the view of Polaris which is needed to calibrate the mount. So I had to take the photo using only the camera on high-ISO, (relatively) short exposure settings.

Two things became evident in this round of photographing. One, Vesta (magnitude 5.7) and Ceres (magnitude 7.0) could be clearly seen moving towards west each day. Two, the SkyTracker mount did an excellent job tracking the stars and the asteroids, producing images far better than using camera only. The second night's photo had small streaks, despite having only 10 seconds of exposure. Here are the full resolution photos used for the animation.


Device: Canon SX50 HS
Filters: None
Location: Suwon, Korea

#1: 121mm - ISO 80 - 300s - f/5.0 - 2014-04-22 00:05 KST
#2: 121mm - ISO 1600 - 10s - f/5.0 - 2014-04-24 00:07 KST
#3: 119mm - ISO 80 - 300s - f/5.0 - 2014-04-24 23:19 KST