Don't forget to update the thread title. It's still stuck on last year's Sept 8th Lunar Eclipse........

Collimation ah? God bless you! That's the one thing I detest about owning a telescope with mirrors.

BTW did you get a lot of ang pow this year?

Waaaah so much ang pow. Me very jealous lo.

I agree that our sky conditions make it a bit difficult to justify getting a larger aperture....but some ppl just want to buy 10"+++ to show off.

So your collimation done already? Recently I tried to collimate a Newtonian, after 2 hours, still not satisfied with the image quality. But then I was mad enough to try to do it in the daytime, crazy me.

Over here in Klang Valley, the skies were quite good just before CNY. Now getting bad again......hope it will be clear for the eclipse. Maybe if I have time, try for some shots of Saturn too.

How come you are always having exams?

Anybody managed to photograph this morning's eclipse? I just couldn't get my camera mounted & focused properly this morning (too many beers and wine last night celebrating Chap Goh Meh and I got a hangover); watched the moon shrinking with my naked eyes instead. It was awesome!

Well done, vikingw2k.

I must say that these are probably the most detailed moon shots we've had in this thread shot without the use of a telescope. The first time I've see the capabilities of the Sony A100 for astrophotography.

Now, if only you had done this during the eclipse.........

This post has been edited by March05: Mar 5 2007, 09:01 AM

Hey littlegreen, how come you can see Mr.LKM's pics if he hasn't posted them yet?

Of course lah, everybody knows the moon is made of delicious cheese.

Breaking news: An Aussie named Lovejoy has just discovered a new comet - get this, using his Canon 350D.

Maybe I'll go get meself one then.

Almost forgot, Mr.LKM, I love your Lunar Eclipse sequence. You got your Minolta K back in action! Did you piggy back it on your LX90?

This post has been edited by March05: Mar 17 2007, 02:07 PM

Hey, vikingw2k, I think we were both out feeding the mosquitoes at the same time.

I saw the nice moon setting too and decided to carry out the telescope for some shots, as usual with my Casio Digicam.

My results:

The Half Eaten Moon:-
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b349/Mar...on26March07.jpg

I love this lunar feature located in Mare Fecunditatis; the 2 Messier Craters and the long birthray (actually there are two rays but my setup couldn't resolve this). I always think of this as a spaceship crashlanding site.......
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b349/Mar...MessierMoon.jpg

Just a test of my focusing: the ultra slim Rima Ariadaeus. Happily I caught it although this is not quite the best time to photograph it. Believe it or not, this is a flat bottomed almost straight valley roughly 200-300 kilometers long, 4 kilometers wide and about half a kilometer deep. See if you can figure out where it is in my pic.
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b349/Mar...maAriadaeus.jpg

The Rima Ariadaeus one? Where is it? I couldn't find it in your blog.

But I found your Lens of Madness..... Which reminds me, have you insured your LX90?

Nowadays they will sell insurance for anything under the sun, otherwise how to pay for commercials like Lens of Madness?

Strange thing happened this morning. I woke up at about 6.00 am, feeling disturbed. Then I went out into the garden and looked up. There was Jupiter, and Scorpio, brilliant!

But I noticed something unusual happening to Jupiter - got out my Casio and tripod, and took a 5 sec exposure.

See what I saw!


Jupiter was DANCING!!!!

That picture is straight from the original shot.

Other than increasing the contrast, reducing the gamma a little bit to reduce the background noise, and resizing it to 800x600, I swear there was no photoediting, double exposure, or any deliberate camera tricks!

The phenomenon disappeared immediately after the first shot I took. In all subsequent shots I took, Jupiter was rock solid still. As if Zeus suddenly realised someone was watching him.

This was taken just 5 minutes later. Longer - 15 second exposure. You can also see more stars now.


No more dancing!

Ya, I was thinking of submitting this picture to spaceweather. Maybe their experts can figure out what caused this miracle.

I was quite groggy from sleep that morning and it could be I was imagining things, but what could have caused the first shot to come out like that?

Just a little reminder that this Saturday 21st April is Astronomy Day!

I'm planning a private star gazing marathon starting at Saturday 10.00 pm till Sunday 7.00 am. Just going to put the Autostar on the Star Tour and let it take me on a trip around the universe.

I hope I'll survive it.......if not, adios, seņores, so long, thanks for all the fish....(from `The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy').

Still the same old Chinese refractor.....mounted on a old second hand LXD55 GEM with Autostar.

Astronomy on a tight budget.......

Do a google on the internet and you'll see the hate-bashing this GEM gets. Shocking!

I don't think it's a good travelling mount.....heavy and bulky. Will put some dents in the car during sharp corners.

The moon's quite nice tonite. I'll try to shoot some pics through my old binoculars just for the hell of it. If they turn out better than through my fancy chinese refractor, I'll eat my hat.

BTW, Shoot@M3, binoculars are actually a matched pair of small refracting telescopes, so you can tell ppl you've got two telescopes......

Okay, snapped off 19 shots before the mosquitoes attacked!

The best result:



well, at least I know I won't have to eat my hat........

Not bad, considering it's a pair of pasar malam 10x50 binos.

This post has been edited by March05: Apr 30 2007, 10:10 PM

I just held the camera up to the bino eyepiece and snap lah. Out of 19 shots, only 2 are in `focus' and with minimal camera shake. The rest can go into the recycle bin.

I guess it would be better if I used a proper adapter to center the camera lens and hold it steady, but I don't have one on hand.

Please note that these digital binocams do not use the binocular optics to capture the image. Having a 32 mm or larger aperture is meaningless.