U can also point the telescope at the planet and ask for its identity......

Go out and take a look now. Look West, not North. Both planets are setting already. But you have missed the conjunction: it was last night. I was watching them while driving home, both planets easily able to pierce through the usual KL smog. No stars could be seen. Tonite they are already moving apart.
Try for the Moon-Venus close encounter on the 7th September. It will be a new Moon......just a thin curve, very spectacular if you can spot it.

How do you know I'm not in hospital right now? Just kidding.....
Actually, on the way back from KL to Subang Jaya, I take the Federal Highway. I'm like facing West most of the time. The two lovers up in the sky right in front of me lah.
Your photography alot better than mine;

BTW deepyu, how's the stills using your new Panasonic 3 CCD? I'm thinking of upgrading to 3 CCD too, but I think I need a digicam (much cheaper) first. Cannot keep using my handycam as a still camera, it's embarassing. My 35mm SLR has unfortunately given up the ghost.

Mr.LKM whatever you do, don't miss Wednesday nite's rare Moon-Venus-Jupiter event. Take lots of pics and show us. I'll be trying with my handycam, but you can see the quality is nothing to shout about.

You could have fooled me - seeing the new moon at 6.07pm in smoggy KL? Not without a GOTO telescope!
But from Melbourne, different story lah.
Please don't forget to show us your shots for tomorrow. I've a bad feeling the haze is coming back to spoil our seeing here in KL. I could have sworn I smelt smoke in the air this morning.......

Yes look West again, keep your eyes peeled for the Moon as the sun sets.

Photographing the Moon (i.e. getting the exposure correct) to catch the earthshine (thanks, wKkaY, for bringing this up) will be a real challenge to all you budding photographers. Too little exposure, you only get black on the dark side of the moon. Too much, the sunlit crescent will bloom!

You're right of course, if we're talking about mere mortals doing `earthshine' lunar photography.
Take a look at this one; Earthshine and Venus
I hope tomorrow will be spectacular like this (in my dreams).
wKkaY, the shot of a shot you took wasn't bad at all, the dark side is clearly visible. I can only imagine what the original is like..........

O wow, the details are amazing for a DV camera. The fur seems almost 3D, my fingers're itching to reach out and stroke the feline.........and those..those green eyes! Well captured, deepyu. I just love cats (except when they steal my dinner).
I hope you take some shots of the event tonite too.
I know I'm totally outclassed here. Should I even try with my handycam?

BTW has it occurred to anyone that this may be the event that inspired our National Flag?
I think our Moon and Star symbol was actually the Moon and Venus (misidentified as a star as usual....)!!! Because no star could be that bright relative to the Moon.
Mr.LKM, if you successfully snap tonite's event, you can submit it to the national papers and entitle it `MERDEKA!'. You'll be famous!

Don't worry about that. I'll be your manager/agent.
You be famous, i be rich...hah,hah. Then I can buy you that telescope! and another one for me, of course.

Counting on you, man.
Disaster here in KL - the sky's totally overcast, and it's drizzling. We need a miracle....
deepyu, are u in KL too?
Mr.LKM, how's it looking over in Kluang?
I fear, deepyu, our telescope dreams are evaporating fast........

Tonite Moon and Venus will be about 13 degrees apart (last nite only 1.5 degree). Can still take photo, but not so dramatic, lah. The Moon will be fatter, so difficult to catch nice earthshine, the best earthshine shots are taken when the moon is just one day old.
Look West again after sunset, try for the fun of it, bye,bye, telescopes ........

Oooooooo what we missed here in Malaysia!
wKkay, thanks for the shot. We can at least share the event with you even though we were not there with you. You even caught Spica lurking on the other side of the Moon!

I love the composition, with the trees in near silhouette.

How long did it take you to set up the shot? I can almost imagine you running up and down the tower frantically like a madman, then down the street, your eyes fixed on the moon, praying the sky conditions will hold...............Astrophotography can give you the most severe heart palpitations! If not heart failure.
And I think Mr.LKM here is heart broken.
Never mind, there will be more opportunities in the years to come. The Sky giveth, the Sky taketh away.

Finally tonite can see the Moon, Venus and Jupiter. Still very cloudy, but catching glimpses of the trio in brief breaks......just watched for over an hour.

wKkay, looking at your pic again, the trees seem to be raising their arms (the branches) in celebration of the event! Or are they reaching out to join the three (four?) friends in the sky? A very thought provoking composition indeed. The more I look at it the more I like it.

How much it cost in Malaysia? I think more than GOTO telescope......
Not rich enough.......

but i want everthing NOW!
ayuh, pengsan lah, how to save money for so many things. I think everyday eat kacang putih only also cannot help.

Wait a few more years and u can get it for free. NASA's abandoning it. U'll have to come up with a maintenance plan.......ha ha.

No matter how sensitive the sensor is, astrophotography is always pushing technology to the limits. Because we want to capture objects that are extremely dim, long exposures and large apertures are going to be a necessary evil.
A telescope will always out perform a telephoto lens due to its resolving ability, and not its magnification. The telescope is designed to optimise starlight and non visible light by using special coatings. A telescope must also have practically no chromatic aberration; you would be hard pressed to find a telephoto lens meeting this specification even if you reach the several hundred thousand ringgit level. Normal camera lenses are good for terrestrial objects because this is natural to our eyes but may be quite poor at stellar objects.

So an accurate mount is still a must-have for anyone getting into Astrophotography - especially for planetary images and deep sky stuff. It has become so that anyone with a cheap webcam and a good GOTO telescope can do better Astrophotography than with a super camera without a GOTO telescope. Of course, if you have a super camera and a GOTO telescope, the sky's the limit.

the Canon that TheVoIP & deepyu mentioned earlier is one commercial attempt to market a camera with a CMOS which is more sensitive to certain wavelengths deemed abundant out there. Use the same arrangement for your normal on-earth shots, and things will look pretty unbalanced. This development has made the astronomers quite excited, since in the past they had to hunt around for rare stocks of certain Kodak CCDs to do so called professional work. Now the Nikon D70s, and the new Canons are the rage!

CCD/CMOS noise is no longer a such big factor in astrophotography since dark frame processing can deal with it.

This post has been edited by March05: Sep 15 2005, 12:53 AM

Hope i don't sound like i'm preaching. just that when ppl want to talk about my favorite subjects, i lose control....... Be free to tear me to pieces anytime.


Don't be modest, your reputation precedes you. Photography is about exploring new territories, noone knows it all; we are always beginners. ha, ha.

Full agreement here.


The modern consumer camera is a pretty amazing all round device and would out perform most professional stuff available years ago. But technology moves on, and we have reached new frontiers again.

Yes, it is standard to plug in CCD/CMOS devices to computers (notebooks are popular due to their mobility) in digital astrophotography to do realtime processing and storage. We don't actually take astrophotos by pressing the shutter button anymore.......the thousands of frames acquired in a single session would swarm even a 1 GB flash storage device.

BTW, long exposures are a parameter in film based Astrophotography, not so much in Digital Astrophotography. The best CCD/CMOS devices will all suffer from increasing noise levels in a short while, and become unusable. That is one reason why so many amateur astrophotographers still keep their manual 35mm SLRs. It is difficult photography, but you have no battery problems, and you don't need to run the lightmeter, no aperture and shutter control except bulb mode.

Now i need to go and sulk for a month (because missed the Moon-Venus -Jupiter thing last week). See you during the Mars close encounter in October.

Just in case, plenty of Star Parties going on this weekend, due to the Full Moon/ Lantern Festival. Make sure you go out and join/gatecrash one! deepyu, going to climb which mountain?

Congratulations, Mr.LKM. You have caught the Moon passing through the Constellation of Scorpius.

Anyone got nice full moon pics? Saturday night was hazy, but managed to see the moon for about 30 minutes. Glorious. Now can watch the moon in the morning sky already, no need to sleep late.
I must buy a digicam soon - all these opportunities going to waste...........
Any suggestions, guys? To be used for digiscoping, not prime focus astrophotography.
Right now my choice is between Casio EX S500 or Ricoh Caplio GX8.