Fishing for photons and I ain't got no pole..

[Fumesucker]

This is I think the worst photo of this object I've ever seen. :bounce:

I tried this as a lark while I look for a motor drive for my telescope mount (for zero or near zero money ;) ), I really didn't think it was going to work but like Clarke said, to know the limits of the possible you have to venture into the impossible at least a little ways.

Anyhoo, I set my camera up pointed at the Andromeda galaxy on my basic tripod with a little clip I made to hold the shutter button down, I set it for max ISO (1600) and max zoom (55mm) and let it take a continuous set of eight second exposures for forty five minutes. Longer exposures are better for stuff like this but the longer the exposure the more the object moves in the sky, you'll see the brighter stars in particular look odd shaped, that's because everything drifted during each eight second exposure.

Then I put all those images and a few dark frames (same everything but a hood over lens) in the computer and used some free software to align and average all the images and about four hours of background processing later I came up with this small crop of the original very large image..



Here's a somewhat better pic of the same object shown at about the same scale but taken with an actual telescope and drive. ;) (note that the images are mirror reversed, it's common with astronomical images)



Here's a link to the software I used, it's interesting (to me anyway) that the software uses a concept that was developed for the Hubble Space Telescope called "drizzling" that can increase the resolution of the final image close to three times if you have enough frames to stack and drizzle, that's what I did here.

http://deepskystacker.free.fr/english/index.html

Edited due to speling teh tittle rong..

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

1. Kewl!

:fistbump: I took an Astronomy course in college and have been fascinated ever since with the vastness of the Universe. Too big and complex to be an accident, imho :bounce:

[alfredo]

2. That's very good for imaging on the cheap.

[Fumesucker]

3. Did another series of shots last night and got this..

293 exposures at 5 seconds and ISO 200 (that was a mistake, supposed to be 1600) with an antique Yashinon 50mm f1.7 at f1.7..

The seeing was by no means optimum for this image, I couldn't spot Andromeda at all even with some small binoculars thanks to the haze and light pollution and it's a not particularly difficult naked eye object under dark skies.

[ManiacJoe]

4. Very cool.

We have the Perseid meteor shower coming up on the 12-13th. I have a relatively dark spot picked out and am looking to see what kind of pictures I can get.

[Fumesucker]

5. Now if only the weather will cooperate..

I was all set up last night, fabricated a mount for my green laser pointer while it was nice and clear yesterday evening and then as soon as it got really dark the clouds moved in, now it's raining.

Of course our humidity has been so high that it's like peering up through the bottom of a slightly murky pond most of the time in the summer even when there aren't any outright clouds.