Plants...?

I know what you are thinking...No those were not put there by mistake. They are not astrophotos in anyway, and they are not even that good of photos besides that. The way that I took them is what makes them acceptable to put up here.

These were taken with my camera. The thing that sets them apart from any other photos I have taken is that there was no lens whatsoever attached to the camera. I was just holding the body. Normally there is no way at all to take a picture that looks like anything when you do that. There is however a way if you want to do it.

Here is a picture of what I was doing except replace my hand with the ccd in the camera.

It is a strange picture, but what is happening is that the image is coming through the telescope and being projected onto my hand. I think that is just the neatest thing! To do this, take the eyepeice out of the telescope, then move your hand back and forth until the image gets in focus.

As I said, not really astrophotos, but it is used in astronomy on occasion. I dont know if you recall the posts from the transit of Venus, but one of them showed a projected image of the sun.

There it is below. That is just the same thing, except all machined to work properly.

I thought it would be cool to try, and it turns out that it was!

I will get back to actual astrophotos tomorrow, this was just a fun thing that I thought I would show you.

Da Moon

This is the moon. I took this through my 4 inch refracting telescope with my camera attached to it. Fun stuff.

Dome Panorama

This is a composite of 30 pictures featuring the 32 inch telescope at UVic. The dome is actually round, it is not oval shaped, but you get a sort of fish eye effect with the composite like this. The telescope is actually much closer to me than it appears.

It is impossible to get a good view of the dome with just one shot unless you have a fisheye, and I dont have one of those, so I decided to make a composite to achieve the same effect. The compositor software is called Microsoft ICE, for Image Composite Editor. It is actually very good and easy to use.

On the left is another picture from the side this time.

I have said this before, but I will say it again. We host an open house every Wednesday night from 9-10 in the summer and from 8-10 during the winter. We take the month of september off as the telescope is used heavily for classes then.

The open house is located on the 5th floor of the Bob Wright Center at the University of Victoria and is open to all ages. In addition to this telescope we have several smaller telescopes set up on our rooftop terrace, and a virtual planetarium set up on a projector.

Recently we have been looking at Arcturus, Alberio, Saturn, Mars, the Moon, M57, M51, and M13.

A Nebula if You Please

This is another very cool object. This is M57. With the 32 inch telescope it is just barely visible with the naked eye as a hazy white thing. Here you can clearly see the nebula as well as the white dwarf right in the center of it. The nebula was formed by a red giant star expelling its shell of gas into space on its way to becoming a white dwarf. This is the stunning result. Once again, not a great picture of it, but I am going to work on that!

Charles, Not Mark

This is the spectacular M13 globular cluster. I converted the image into greyscale to bump up the contrast a little. I will put the original color version at the end of the post. This is one of the objects that I am going to use to work on figuring out how to use this adaptor. It is very tricky to use as the focus is completely different and very difficult to achieve. Not the most spectacular photo, but really cool in my opinion!

Here is the original color version.

The red color comes largely from the light pollution I believe. It can be gotten rid of with some fancy tricks which I intend to learn, but for now, it stays. You can see how some of the stars are hotter and bluer, and how some are redder and cooler.

Not Running Away Again!

As you can probably see, this is a picture of the moon. That in itself is not super interesting. This picture was taken with my own camera. Again not super interesting as all of the photos here fit that description. What is interesting is that my camera had no lens attached to it when this photo was taken, save for the 32 inch telescope at UVic.

My very wonderful prof got an adaptor so that my, or any other camera can be attached to the telescope. This is very very cool. With the moon all it does is give you a close up view, but with faint objects, it opens whole new worlds of photographic possibility.

The next few posts will be from my first night trying out this adaptor, and while they will not be anything spectacular, I think they are very cool.

Airplanes in the Sky

This is once again from my yard in Courtenay where the skys are clear and dark. An airplane bound for Asia cuts across the picture.

Garden Under the Stars

The beautiful night sky over my moms beautiful garden in Merville.

Getting out of the city is so nice. The sky is just so amazingly clear and full of stars.

Lightning!

Victoria does not get a lot of lightning. It is a very rare thing to see in Victoria, and most of the time it is way off on the horizon.

This past Friday night, on the 13th in fact, there was a huge thunderstorm which went on for hours. It was all around for many kilometers in every direction, as well as right overhead.

Like any smart city dweller who sees very little lightning, I, along with many many others flocked to the top of the highest hill in Victoria to get a better view. Unlike many however, I stayed well away from the very top, and made sure not to sit on the gigantic metal railings which surround the parking lots and provide an excellent place to sit when there is not an electrical storm.

At first it was still light out, but after an hour or so, the sun set in a truly spectacular fashion.

Not long after that marvellous spectacle, the conditions got just right for lightning photography. The way you do it is to set up the camera on a tripod, point it in a direction with lots of flashes, compose a nice foreground, and set it to take 30 second or so exposures. Keep pressing the shutter until you get something!

Here are some of the results.

Not exactly astrophotos, but I think they are really neat, and I wanted to share them with you.

The Big Handle

Night over the city.

Most of the big dipper is visible in this shot looking out over the city.

Artsy Fartsy Me

This one is a bit more of an artsy shot than an astrophoto, but I think it is worth sharing with the world.

This was a magnificent sunset last week from the top of Mt Tolmie. It was one of the more spectacular sunsets I have ever seen, not the least because it took place during a rare Victoria thunderstorm.

Stars in the Back Yard

I took this just last night from outside my back door. I lay on my back with my camera set up on the tripod right beside me, put on some nice quiet Beatles tunes and just generally chilled out for 20 or so minutes while the series of 41 photos were shot.

Then I smushed them in the magic smushing program, and here is the final product.