ToddSpace: John's Astrophotography Page

May 2006 Galaxy Hunting

In the astrophotography hobby, April and May are glorious times of year to shoot some relatively close galaxies with views completely unobstructed by the plane of the Milky way.  What do I mean by that?  During the summer and winter, if you're in a dark enough area, you'll see the stars of the milky way stretching across the sky, not so in spring and autumn.  Here are three galaxy shots that I took in the last two months, each of them are composites of about 2 hours worth of exposure time with my new camera, a modified canon 350d (modified specifically for astrophotography).  The first in the parade of galaxies is known as Bode's nebula.  Bode's nebula is of course, not a nebula at all but rather a pair of galaxies in the constellation ursa major.  The pair, known as m81 and m82 are gravitationally bound and it's been theorized that m81 (the one on the right, a grand design spiral galaxy) has been shredding apart it's neighbor.  It's known as Bode's nebula because on new years eve, 1774, it was first described by Johann Bode as a difuse nebula.  A hundred years later when galaxies were better understood, that was corrected.  Next up we have m101, also known as the pinwheel galaxy.  This galaxy, also located in ursa major, is visible with binoculars under very dark skies located between the first and second stars of the big dipper's handle and offset to the north.  It's lopsided shape is most likely due to a tidal interaction with another galaxy in the neighborhood, which one, I can't even guess.  This galaxy is about 24 million light years away.  If you do go looking for it, you must dark adapt your eyes as it is not a very bright galaxy at all, it's only under long exposure photography can we begin to see the magnificent spiral arms this beauty holds.  Last up is the "Black eye galaxy", so called because of its... well, it's black eye!  Can you see it?  M64 was discovered by Edward Pigott on March 23, 1779, interestingly, just 12 days before the aforementioned Johann Bode found it completely independently.  It was given the black eye monicker shortly afterwards by William Herschel.  The dark part of the galaxy, i.e. the black eye, is the result of heavily concentrated interstellar dust lanes, under very high resolution photographs taken by hubble, we now know that this dust lane is alive with star formation and many hydrogen alpha emissions.  Speaking of Hydrogen alpha emissions, these are the very well known red nebulas that populate our summer skies, when next I post, I hope to have some of these summer beauties from within our own milky way galaxy... stay tuned!

My first Comet Schwassmann-Wachmann Frag C

On Sunday morning, May 7th, I set the alarm clock for 3:00am to shoot this beauty.  I didn't have much time because morning light as signaled by the whip-poor-wills was fast approaching.  Unfortunately, it took me a good 30 minutes to find this, I can state first hand that it was NOT naked eye visible on that evening.  I ended up using the celestial coordinates of the object and by hand rotating my telescope to where it should be.  I took 4 3 minute exposures, but because the comet was crossing the meridien at the time, I had all kinds of tracking problems (German Equitorial Mounts have a tiny bit of slop in their gear drives making it near impossible to photograph through the meridien). 

The following evening this comet fragment (frag C) transitted the ring nebula, unfortunately, here in southern NH the high thin cirrus clouds made photographing this event impossible.

Hubble catches comet Schassmann-Waachmann 3 breaking up!

Here's something that you don't see more than maybe once in a lifetime... Comet Schassmann-Waachmann fragment B is rapidly disintegrating!  These shots were caught by Hubble as one of the primary fragments is breaking up. 

Here in this Hubble photograph you can see the fragments trailing the primary.  Will this comet make it past Earth before completely falling apart?  Wait and see!  For those of you worried about impact, nothing to worry about, this whole shroud of comet matter will pass about six times further than the moon to us.  The whole story can be found here: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20060501/comet_spa.html

Thanks Steve Stein for forwarding this to me!

Moonscape Photography

Ever wish you could take a photo of the starry night and also capture landscapes at the same time?  It's actually quite easy, and requires nothing more than a camera that can take long exposure photographs, a tripod, a shutter release cable and a clear night with lots of moonlight.  Here's two examples of Moonscape photography that I took a couple years back, one of my backyard and one of my neighborhood:

Both of these pictures were taken of landscapes with the full moon to my back.  The secret to these photos is that moonlight is nothing more than reflected sunlight, albeit, not much (3% I believe) but enough to illuminate foreground landscapes while not enough to wash out the stars in the sky.  To take these types of photos, simply pick your landscape subject, preferable to use a wide angle lens (27-50mm), and with the moon to your back and with the camera on a tripod, simply take a long exposure photograph with your f-stop set to about f/8-f/22.  Try bracketing your exposures, anything from 30 seconds to 15 minutes.  I've noticed that with very bright moonlight, 30 seconds at f/8 is all that is needed to illuminate the landscape.