On Sunday Night I drove back to the main beach which is pretty strikingly dark at night. I got a nice shot of Orion above a lifeguard shelter above and a few stars north of Orion above the beach and hotel complex. Both were done at ISO 6400, 1/2 sec, f2.8.
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Dippered Again
The camera has a setting for taking star-trail time lapses. The video shows the stars of the big dipper moving over a couple of hours last night. Off the frame to the left is the north star that everything rotates around. The orangey star rising at the right halfway through is Arcturus.
Interestingly, the camera sets itself to ISO 100 and 25 second exposures where the longest it will let me set is 15 seconds. There’s a second setting for a night sky timelapse which maybe doesn’t smear the stars. I’m going to try that tonight if it’s clear and see if i can stack some of the frames.
below is the closest i could get to the last frame of the video and one of the early frames with just the dipper rotated and cropped.
Venus and Mars are Out Tonight (well, Jupiter really and it was yesterday morning)
These shots of Jupiter are about equivalent to what i got on my first try. Leftmost two are ISO 100 f8 1/60, the brighter one one is ISO 400, and the last one is ISO 400 but 1/200 sec. In my imagination I can see banding on all of them. Jupiter was quite high in the sky(almost 40 degrees) and seemed clear to the naked eye.
Venus remains a sh*tshow although the overexposed one is pretty. The first one is ISO 6400 f8 1/200 sec, the others are ISO 100 f8 1/200, 1/1000, 1/500. Venus was very bright but low(16 degrees) and starting to get lost in the sun.
Disappointing Dipper
I find it interesting that, at maximum exposure, the P900 is just a bit better than my 70 year old mark I eyeball. This is ISO 1600, 1 sec, f2.8 and I brightened it as much as i could on the PC. I had tried ISO 6400 1/2 sec with no better result. I guess I imagined there were countless other stars that my eye couldn’t see. The limits of the camera seem to be about the same as my eye – around magnitude 3. The second star from the left is Mizar and you can just see its fainter companion Alcor which, to be fair, my eye cannot.
I also took a series of snaps and combined them with rot’n’stack but no great joy. If the skies are clear again tonight I’ll try a star-trails timelapse.
Some Pointers
Googling around I found this site which has some good images with settings. The Jupiter below which is better than mine was done at ISO 100 f6.5 1/60 sec. The moons 100,6.5,1/4
I asked a question on reddit re my venus settings and someone pointed out that venus is much smaller – 14 arcseconds vs 38 for jupiter. in my images i have venus about 13 pixels high and jupiter 50.
so tomorrow moring if clear before sunrise i’ll try
-saturn at 200,6.5,1/60
-same for jupiter,
-moons at 1/4 sec, and
-venus at 100,8,1/1000-1/500-1/200
On that site he shows his attempts to image the ISS which are not too encouraging but I would be pleased to duplicate them
Again – both those images came from www.weasner.com
The Sadness of Venus
UPDATE: I did a marginally better job on my second try. The left image is ISO 100, 1/1000 sec f8 focal length 1600 – the biggest improvement would probably be more zoom.
When I got out to the balcony this morning i noticed that Venus was quite bright in the south eastern sky. I didn’t have time to do much planning or careful exposure but i took a few quick shots. My best effort is still woefully overexposed but it does show something like the phase of venus i would expect. The pic on the right is just blown out venus on a blue sky but i found it a bit pretty.
Looking at the layout of the solar system today (below from The Planets Today), my position is shown by the red dot on the earth which is rotating counterclockwise toward the sun. You can see why jupiter and venus are visible in the morning and mars in the evening. In a few months Earth will be in line with jupiter at the green line across earth’s orbit and jupiter will be visible all night.
Jupiter Late Night
This is Jupiter around 3 this morning taken at ISO 400 f7.1 1/200 second more-or-less fully zoomed. I’m pleased that it shows some banding on the planet and the colour looks right.
This is overexposed at ISO 6400, f5.6 1/2 sec and it’s only half zoomed but it shows the 4 gallilean moons well. I found as soon as i went down in exposure i started to lose the moons which were the whole point of the shot.
Below is from Javascript Jupiter set to the same time showing the moons more-or-less as i caught them.
The two shots below were taken at lower exposures – the left one is ISO 400, f5.6, 1/2 sec. The right one is ISO 3200 f7 1/200 sec. In both cases I’m starting to lose the moons but jupiter is still way overexposed.
Below is the best full-zoom video that i got. not sure if it’s worth trying to process it.
Spacex Crew Dragon Launch
On March 2, 2019 there was a launch of a Spacex Falcon 9 carrying a demonstration capsule to the Space Station. We are about 80 miles south of Cape Canaveral but we have a clear view over the Atlantic to the launch area. I set up my Nikon P900 set to wide angle and started a video at launch. Visually we could see the rocket for a good long time but it passed out of the video frame in a couple of minutes. The two minute video is kind of boring but i sped it up to 30 seconds which improved the drama a bit. My real goal was a streak so i used a combination of free software to composite all the frames of the 30 second video into the shot below. I’m reasonably pleased although i would have liked some bit of foreground to show up. This was at 2:30 am and the buildings along the beach were pretty much black.
the video was cropped and sped up with an online editor https://ezgif.com/video-speed.
the frames were split out with pipp https://sites.google.com/site/astropipp/pipp-manual/
the split frames were stacked with rot’n’stack https://www.astrobin.com/gear/37336/rotnstack-rotnstack/
Jupiter and Ganymede
This unimpressive specimen is the planet Jupiter and its largest moon Ganymede (dull fuzzy thing in the bottom left). It’s pathetic but it’s the first time i’ve gotten anything even remotely usable. It’s a single frame extracted from a wobbly video taken after the spacex launch around 3 am march 2 2019.
I know it’s ganymede by reference to javascript jupiter animation of the system at the same time. The reason my image is tilted is that I’m tilted by virtue of being down at 27 degrees latitude.
This is an image from a nikon forum. It was taken at ISO 400, f8 1/2 second. The recommendations on the forum was to go down to 1/100 of a sec at f7 ISO 400 and try lower ISO’s.
They ref this page for an example and quote settings of 1/200th @ f6.5 ISO100 at 357mm(which is not very zoomed). That image shows a decent (small) image of jupiter but no moons.
People do stack videos to enhance them but i don’t think my starting quality is worth the trouble. My main problem is that i was wobbling all over the place trying to center the planet. My tripod is light and at full zoom the heavy lens is unbalanced and causes a droop. I have a better mount coming today so i hope to try again tomorrow night.
I’m going to try for some still images at ISO 400, f8, 1/2 sec and go down from there all the way to 1/200 f6.5 ISO 100 less zoom and then i’ll try a minute of video at various zooms – this all hinges on being able to center and hold the planet.
Plan A:
As much zoom as I can
ISO f-stop shutter
400 f8 1/2
1/10
1/100
f7
200 f8 1/100
100 f6.5 1/200
a minute of video
less zoom and repeat
Orion to Hyades to Pleiades
Astrophotography Newbie 