Astro 9A/B/C - Astrophotography

Course Requirements: Submit 5 Astrophotos May be taken through the telescope, or camera w/ regular lenses Your best telescopic photo, and your best wide-angle w/ foreground shot must be printed on quality photo paper, 8x10, framed in glass and brought to class. The other photos need not be framed but.jpg versions with full documentation will be submitted for all of your photos, for the on- line Student Gallery All 5 photos need detailed documentation on labels submitted with the photo

What Equipment Do We Have For You? You Need a camera! We have only 3 telescope/camera setups: --- SBIG ST4000xcm on 8” f/4 Schmidt-Newt --- SBIG ST2000xcm on 8” f/4 Schmidt-Newt --- SBIG ST2000xcm on 12” f/6.3 in the dome (the pro setup!) Locating deep sky objects in the 8” scopes is hard and time consuming, so unless I have a volunteer who knows how to do this, we may only be able to use one of these 8” f/4 setups, since I will mostly be helping people inside the dome on the 12” scope.

We also have: Nikon D7000w/ mm, 50mm lenses, and an Olympus OM-1 film camera. These can be shared only at the observatory. We also have 7 Canon Rebel DSLR’s with standard kit lenses and some telephoto lenses. These too can only be used while you are at the observatory. You should have a computer, hopefully, to process your digital pix. We do have 6 computers in 705 Windows PC is best – we have the software for you. Mac’s…. You’re on your own!

If You Plan to Use our DSLR Cameras… Then you will need to buy an SD Card. These can be bought at any drug store. They don’t have to be high capacity or fast You’ll use a Sharpie to put your initials on the card and that way when you get a camera to use, you pop in your SD Card and are ready to go, and then pop it back out and put in your pocket when the camera is returned to me so I can check it out to another student

Any SD card should do; this one is a little pricier, 32GB and HC 10 speed

Same card, back side. This is just so you know what to look for

How to Get Your Images to a Computer? You can buy a small adapter that mates SD cards to a USB port, and then your photos can be put into either our room 705 computer(s), or your own computer.

An SD-to-USB Adapter; super cheap at e.g. Santa Cruz Electronics, or Radio Shack, or maybe a drug store. I carry one around in my day pack

Your Own Digital Camera Is best! iPhone cameras not going to work for the night shots we do. Most important capability – ability to manually set the exposure, and go up to at least 30 seconds. Pocket cameras will not do this. These days all DSLR’s will have in-camera noise reduction and pretty good ISO range Again – aside from the 3 telescope setups, we have only 7 digital camera you can share – very tough for a large class! Try to get, or borrow, your own digital camera.

What it Takes to Produce Shots like the Previous Slide About minutes to find the object in the scope Another minutes centering it, focusing, calibrating the mount at this position Then 20 minutes of photography: 3 x 5 minute exposures Then an hour or more processing and polishing the photo, or more if you are very intimidated by using new software. Maybe 3 if the class size drops enough and if the dome scope is used (trade-offs there, more later), which shortens the locating aspect. Weather is often cloudy, and big moon nights also rule out deep sky shots Bottom Line: Expect that you will get only ~2-3 telescope/camera shots like this.

Your other photos must be with DSLR cameras Get shots with the foreground and then an astronomical background. Moonrise/set, trees w/ stars, the lighthouse at deep twilight w/ stars, be creative – but ask me if you’re unsure. The night sky aspect must be a central theme. Don’t give me a daylight photo which happens to include a little moon off in the corner!

Class Procedure Clear nights – we go to the observatory and shoot Cloudy nights – we work here, on computers, polishing your projects Here’s how to get to the observatory…

Example Photos from Past Student Projects…

Comets? So far, none that we have discovered so far will be bright enough to photograph But, that could change at any time. I’ve linked a web page “future comets” which will tell us about that.

Planets? Only Venus and Mars are visible this semester Uranus, maybe shots through the 12”, w/ moons? Worth a try Planets are done with a different technique – video footage and software which finds and stacks only the sharpest frames. Example of Ron Yelton’s work on footage I made of the comet impact on Jupiter a few years ago…

The Moon! Needs only a snapshot (it’s a normal daylight scene, after all) We’ll do moon shots on nights with a good moon Close ups using the 10” Meade, and can also use the 8” scopes to get the whole moon.

This shot used our DSLR with a long lens. Note it’s not that sharp

How To Select your Project Ideas for when You Get an Opportunity on a Scope? Use the Web to get ideas, like google searching for “bright deep sky objects in the Fall sky” Use freeware called C2A (or on a Mac, use Stellarium) or if you have another favorite These show the sky at any time and location, with all of the stars, galaxies, nebulae

The General Procedure After getting telescope photos, you’ll put them through these steps… 1. Use CCDOPS (freeware) to convert to a color.tif file, for each of your individual 5- minute exposures 2. Use Registax 5 or 6 to stack individual frames into a single higher quality composite 3. Use Photoshop to polish your photo into a gem! 4. Take the.jpg image on a memory stick to e.g. Bay Photo to get a print, if it’ll be printed.

At the End of The Course We’ll have a pot luck here in Room 705 and I’ll show on the LCD Projector each of your photo submissions, and comment We’ll take a class photo with smiling students holding up their two favorite framed images!