Lunar and Astro Photography (8)

Very nice - is it feasible to plan a stitched photo from several frames? It might be hard for software to align the bigger picture, I guess, with no or few obvious reference points.

Lovely shot there Matt!

Just for fun last night, in VERY poor viewing conditions I put my A99ii on my most recent scope - a CPC1100. Its a monster, and I love it. Have not had much chance with it since the first weekend I had it in October. (wet coast ya know!) My phone did a better job than the A99ii the week before with a single snapshot through an eyepiece But that is the way of it for this hobby. How steady the atmosphere is sets the limits on what is possible. I currently have 4 astro cams that are all much better at this than a DSLR.... but I still want to use my A99ii as well!

A99ii plus Celestron CPC1100 (2800mm-F10). The moon did not QUITE fit in the frame so I had to use a reducer. And after stacking and processing the mushy files as best I could, I reduced image much more. Click for "full" size.


Here is the A99ii on my new rig. Scope looks pretty scruffy with all that reflectex wrap I put on it. It helps keep the mirror of scope from changing temperature too fast when acclimatizing to the ambient temperature.


Here is the view on the A99ii at "prime" (WithOUT a reducer). It did NOT quite fit on, though it would for smaller phases of moon. Will most certainly try again on the full sensor when the seeing is good!



And.. lol, here is my SINGLE snap from the week before through my eyepiece with my phone. (Pixel 6 Pro). My phone is making fun of my A99ii! Its the seeing. It was better this night. (But WAY too cold to stay out)


Cheers all! Clear skies!

Mike

Mind boggling Photo, your are one dedicated person. You have to be to get results like that. I keep wondering what you would be capable of in a dark sky (no light pollution area)
A dark sky, in hi elevation is pretty much a glimpse of heaven
tfs

evening chant

Francis, that's a super image of the silhouetted blackbird singing against the backdrop of the blue hour night sky and the full moon.

Thank you to WestCoastCannuck for the kind comment above.

I've returned with a different target, the Orion Nebula:



A7RIV, Tamron 70-200/2.8 LD Di IF (A-mount lens adapted via LA-EA5), 76 frames of 1 sec. exposure each at ISO 1600, stacked in DeepSkyStacker and processed in Photoshop.

I'm still trying to learn how to process deep sky images. I have some shots of the comet c-2022 E3 ZTF but I'm not happy with the processing I've done on them, yet.