Astro Wanna-be

[Travis Butler]

That conjunction was pretty cool. Unfortunately, it was cloudy here on the night of actual closest approach but I did manage an image on the next night, using a vintage 1980's 6-inch aperture f/5 Schmidt-Newtonian I normally drag out to my back deck from its usual place as a decoration in the dining room in order to take images of the moon. The image isn't great but at least it's mine.

Yeah... that's better than I managed, at least. I tried multiple shots; if I increased exposure to catch Jupiter's moons, Saturn's rings lost definition.



This was with the 500mm Tamron SP 55BB mirror lens.

 

[Travis Butler]

BTW, I have the SMC Pentax 50mm f/1.4 lens you are using as your avatar. Well, actually the -A version. It works fantastically well for astrophotography on my Pentax K-3II when stopped down to at least f/2.5. I consider it one of my best lenses and certainly one of the best-value lenses in my modest collection. It ranks right up there with my Sigma 18-35mm f/1.8, which costs ten times as much (both purchased used). If you do have the 50mm as well, it should work great with your Olympus (through an adapter of course).

I like it a lot; I've got two copies.

The avatar pic is one I took after a minor disaster; I set the camera down on a rock while I tied my shoe, and it fell off into a mud puddle. The E-M1 is weather-sealed so it was fine, but the lens got a nice coating of mud on the front element. x.x So I spent an hour or so very carefully cleaning it off, and took the pic to see how well it cleaned up. I liked the result well enough to start using it as my avatar.

Here is one image I took using it:

Very nice! Haven't managed anything nearly that detailed.

This is probably my best astro pic, taken while I was comet-shooting with the Tamron 80-210:

• OLYMPUS CORPORATION - E-M1MarkII
• 28 mm f/1
• 28.0 mm
• ƒ/2
• 2.5 sec
• Pattern
• Manual exposure
• 0.3
• ISO 1600

And the comet itself:

• OLYMPUS CORPORATION - E-M1MarkII
• Tamron SP 80-210
• 145.0 mm
• ƒ/3.8
• 6 sec
• Pattern
• 1.7
• ISO 1600

 

[AlenK]

Yeah... that's better than I managed, at least. I tried multiple shots; if I increased exposure to catch Jupiter's moons, Saturn's rings lost definition.



This was with the 500mm Tamron SP 55BB mirror lens.

Still, I can see the rings.

Re rings, moons and belts, I used a compromise exposure time for that image to try to get everything in one shot. But I did other exposures too. To get all four of the Galilean moons, I took many longer exposures with Jupiter centered in the field to minimize aberrations. To get the belts better, I took many shorter exposures. To get Saturn's rings better, I took many suitable exposures with it centered in the frame. My intention was to stack all the similar exposures together and then composite the stacked results with pixel accuracy. Sadly, I still haven't got around to doing that.

 

[AlenK]

And the comet itself:

View attachment 1061

Which comet is that?

 

[AlenK]

Which comet is that?

To try to answer my own question, I plate solved the image. That comet has to be C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE). And I will guess the date as July 22, 2020 or one day either side of it.

That surely was a nice comet! I got out five times to image it: Two mornings and then three evenings. It was much more impressive when it became an evening object. My best image was actually taken with that Pentax 50mm f/1.4 lens we’ve been discussing.

(Details here: https://www.astrobin.com/smsm3t/)

 

[AlenK]

So far this Astrophotography forum seems stillborn. There have been only seventeen posts since it began. I started a thread that could serve as a place for introductions and which I had hoped would induce wallflowers to post. I got one reply. ;-/

I'll post another image to provide some life here. This is another NEOWISE image, this one taken a few days after the one I posted above. For this I used a vintage SMC Pentax-M 28mm f/2.8 lens operating at f/4. Exposures were 30 seconds with tracking by Astrotracer and the total integration time was 14 minutes, The streak at the bottom is the ISS, which photo-bombed my shots of the comet on several other nights.

• Pentax - K-3 II
• 28.0 mm
• 360.190011951 sec
• ISO 200

 

[grsnovi]

Here is a composite/mosaic/panorama of 2 shots I took at Cannon Beach, OR attempting to get Venus, Mars and Haystack Rock.