First photo through my Meade 8" telescope

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Tonight, entirely on a whim, I took a photo of the Great Nebula in Orion through my telescope at prime focus. I've never done that before. I took a series of 25 images at 5 seconds exposure each and I processed them in a program called Deep Sky Stacker. For no preparation, bad focus, and no skill at image processing, I am shocked at how well it turned out. I think I'm about to have a whole new obsessive hobby.
try2-small.jpg
Here's a link to the full resolution image.

https://eldalin.com/wp-content/gallery/ ... y/try2.jpg
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Re: First photo through my Meade 8" telescope

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Good job, Eris! I have an old 10" Meade Schmidt-Cassegrain I haven't used in many, many years--too much light pollution here and the damn thing weighs a ton. But BOY, could it do a an AMAZING job! No GPS though--too old. Used to do film. Last time I used my 90mm Meade ETX was to shoot the recent solar eclipse. My Sony Alpha fit on the old Minolta adapter perfectly.
"Even if the bee could explain to the fly why pollen is better than shit, the fly could never understand."

Re: First photo through my Meade 8" telescope

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SubRosa wrote: Mon Feb 03, 2020 5:01 pm When I was a tenderfoot scout attending Camporee at the California Blackfoot Scout Reservation back in the 60's, we were treated to a trip over to Palomar observatory. I got a peek, don't even remember what I was looking at. I do remember one bigassed mirror.

Major Kudos to Eris!

SR
When we visited the Old Observatory in Greenwich (a boat-ride down the Thames) they had an old wooden telescope they said you could look through and see Pluto. They weren't lying!

Image
"Even if the bee could explain to the fly why pollen is better than shit, the fly could never understand."

Re: First photo through my Meade 8" telescope

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SubRosa wrote:When I was a tenderfoot scout attending Camporee at the California Blackfoot Scout Reservation back in the 60's, we were treated to a trip over to Palomar observatory. I got a peek, don't even remember what I was looking at. I do remember one bigassed mirror.

Major Kudos to Eris!

SR
I had the pleasure of using the Palomar five meter on a few occasions. It was an amazing experience even though the instrument was a bit antiquated. It will always be a temple to astronomy in my eyes.


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Image

Re: First photo through my Meade 8" telescope

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SubRosa wrote: Mon Feb 03, 2020 8:28 pm
When we visited the Old Observatory in Greenwich (a boat-ride down the Thames) they had an old wooden telescope they said you could look through and see Pluto. They weren't lying!
Image

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Are you sure you weren't seeing Goofy? :laugh:

SR
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Nope. Wasn't seeing double either!

But I did get an illicit picture of H1!
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"Even if the bee could explain to the fly why pollen is better than shit, the fly could never understand."

Re: First photo through my Meade 8" telescope

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Bucolic wrote:Woo woo! Very nice! Your image quality is pretty good. You resolved the four stars that make up theta Orionis.

Great work! You gonna try the Crab? Nebula, that is.
That was the first time I'd seen all four stars, in fact! My previous scope could only resolve 3 of them.

Next I'm going to reshoot M42 and try to get a less grainy image. Also need to get some flat field images to add into the processing to help remove the spots from dust on the sensor.

Next target after that, though? The Caldwell 14 Double Cluster is currently in good viewing position, so that's one I want to try. It just barely fits in my field of view.
highdesert wrote:OOOO! is right, very nice. Did you take that from your home or did you have to take a trip to the country?
Both. It's from my back porch, but the house I bought last fall is in the country. Still about Bortle 7 or 8 here, though.
K9S wrote:That could easily become an obsession.
That's the intention! :lol:
Bucolic wrote:I had the pleasure of using the Palomar five meter on a few occasions. It was an amazing experience even though the instrument was a bit antiquated. It will always be a temple to astronomy in my eyes.
Indeed! When I was a wee bairn, Palomar was the biggest scope in the world and I wanted desperately to be able to see it.
106+ recreational uses of firearms
1 defensive use
0 people injured
0 people killed

Re: First photo through my Meade 8" telescope

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Beautiful picture! I always loved that nebula - one of the only things I could see clearly in my light polluted skies. Years ago I hand ground a 10” parabolic mirror from a Pyrex blank and built myself a little telescope, it has fallen into ruin but I still have the mirror - I think this is the year it will rise from the ashes into a new scope.


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