Hi again!
Much has happened since my last post. I’ve been working on my research project for a few weeks now. Last week, all the summer space interns met as a group and we began working on our project: design a human-operated mission to the moon from start to finish. I am particularly interested in the health aspects of the mission, such as how radiation and microgravity affect the human body. I’ve learned a lot about the lunar surface (including its impact craters and past volcanic activity). I’ll save the details for another post, today I’d like to focus on astrophotography.
This post serves as my introduction to the world of astrophotography. It is a collection of trials from a beginner’s perspective. For now, none of the images are through my telescope, but future posts will have more detailed images from my telescope as I learn to navigate it.
I have a Celestron Nexstar 4SE telescope, a medium grade beginner telescope that is able to see lunar features and some planetary features. I have been able to capture Jupiter, Saturn, Mars and (obviously) the moon in the telescope’s eyepiece. However, it’s always been a challenge for me to figure out how to take pictures of what I was seeing. This summer, I decided that I would begin the work to understand the world of astrophotography and learn how to capture what my telescope was showing me.
Upon looking at some tips and tricks for astrophotography, I was met with a few key pointers. Creating an astrophotography image relies on having a clear foreground and a dark background. Long camera exposure time is important to pick up details that are not observable with the naked eye. Also, there are more obvious tips and tricks such as the importance of location (moving away from streetlights and any other forms of light pollution) and thinking about light reflection from the moon. Most resources have made one thing clear: avoid full moons. Light reflection from the full moon makes it difficult to see smaller solar system/deep sky objects.
One trick that I picked up is particularly useful for planetary observing. When looking at the night sky, the Earth’s atmosphere causes objects far away from us (stars) to “flicker”. Since stars are so far away, the light travelling to Earth appears to be coming from a single point. In my telescope, stars appear as a single dot of light. Since stars are so far away, their light to Earth is affected by atmospheric interference. However, when it comes to planets, they do not flicker in the night sky. Planets in our solar system are obviously much closer to Earth than stars, so the light coming from them is less susceptible to atmospheric interference. I have found this useful when trying to find the planets in the night sky to point my telescope to.
With these ideas and plans in mind, the first thing I needed to do was learn more about my DSLR camera, which is a canon powershot. I realized that the perfect opportunity to try my hand at astrophotography would be on the full moon of May 26th. I realize that I just said to avoid full moons, but I was interested specifically in capturing the moon on May 26th. I wanted to test the power and focus of the camera against a large object in the night sky before moving on to smaller objects.
The image below was taken by using zoom and aperture features of my DSLR camera. I then downloaded the image and began looking at editing. I edited for brightness, saturation, and clarity using a simple editor tool on my computer. In the future I do want to learn more about photoshop/image editing.
This was my first attempt at astrophotography of any kind and I am really happy with the clarity of the image. I hadn’t set up a tripod for this image so I was excited to get an image that was so clear. In this image you can see the dark mare regions of the moon, and a few really clear impact craters. Most notably, the young Tycho Crater at the South Pole of the lunar surface is extremely clear.
On the topic of the moon, I wanted to quickly touch on some very interesting facts that I have been learning about lunar surface features and lunar exploration:
I was really interested to learn about the depth of some of the bigger lunar craters and how different temperatures can be when comparing crater floors versus the rims at the surface!
Part of the interest for future exploration at the South Pole of the moon stems from the fact that there is simply more data to explore at this lunar location. There is evidence that both lunar poles contain ice-water, but NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter orbits further away from the North Pole and closer to the South Pole!
A future moon base could potentially use moon regolith to build a protective shield around a potential future moon base. They explored using robots in 3D printing mechanisms on the moon to build structures pre-human landing.
Back on the topic of night-sky events and astrophotography, I wanted to touch on a few cool events coming up that I am particularly excited for. I will update this post as events happen (potentially with pictures).
One event that I am particularly excited for is the solar eclipse of June 10th. I am from Toronto, and here we will be able to see a partial solar eclipse at sunrise (with the eclipse peaking at 5:40 am). I saw this as an excellent opportunity to really expand my astrophotography abilities and learn about solar imaging. I obtained a reliable and ISO approved solar filter for my telescope and I am planning on testing the solar filter in the next couple of days.
To prepare for the solar eclipse of June 10th, I have also purchased solar eclipse glasses (ISO approved). It is essential that proper protections and filters are in place before viewing the sun, with or without an eclipse.
My solar eclipse glasses:)
Update: June 10th, 10:00 AM
I was able to capture the ending of the solar eclipse this morning by shining my iPhone’s camera through the solar eclipse glasses. Unfortunately I did not have time to transport my telescope to the area in time to capture images from it. But, I will try to take some solar images through my telescope another time and possibly update this again before posting!
The pictures shown below are taken at the near-end of the partial solar eclipse.
This picture was the view through my solar eclipse glasses at approximately 6:20 AM this morning.
This was taken about 5 minutes later. The curve created by the moon had already started to decrease in size. As you can see, the solar eclipse was at its end. Infact, it was bound to end at 6:37 am. There is a slight crescent at the bottom portion of the sun, where the moon is almost finished passing by. The solar eclipse peaked with sunrise at 5:40 am, but I wasn’t in a location where I had a clear view of the Eastern horizon at that time.
Although the images could be better, I did get to capture this video that showed the near end of the eclipse. In the video, the moon makes its final pass along the sun and the sun’s crescent shape disappears.
My next goal is to get an image of the sun through my telescope. Later in the summer, I am looking forward to photographing Jupiter and Saturn when they are more visible. These planets will each reach opposition in late July to early August. In the past, I have been able to see both Jupiter and Saturn in my telescope. Some basic features of these two planets were apparent in my past observations of them. I was also able to see a few of Jupiter’s moons last summer in my telescope. I will continue to update this section of the blog as I learn more about astrophotography!
Until next time!