Lunar and Astro Photography (8)

Strawberry Moon (in cooperation with Chat GPT)

Sony a7c, a7r5, 28-60 and 200-600 :)

very nice chief
i recently got the seestar s30 but sold it... i want something on the likes of a dobsonian hahaha

Looks good, Moises!

Can't be sure I'll get any sight of the upcoming total lunar eclipse, but I'm practicing for it.

Shot with A7R IV, and Coulter Odyssey 8" dobsonian telescope, 2x barlow, single frame, ISO 320, 1/125s -- the FL is about 1800mm (900mm telescope FL, doubled using the 2x barlow) and the focal ratio is about f/9 (f/4.5 telescope, doubled again by the barlow).


I could have/should have added an aperture mask which would have brought the scope down to f/10, and the total to f/20, but I forgot to try that.

Same night, same telescope, same camera, an airplane "photobombed" the Moon for me. Here's a 4K video capture on YouTube.. And here's a 1080p version on my Zenfolio.

Edited by alpha_in_exile - 12 March 2025 at 03:08

First clear night in a long time, grabbed about 81 minutes' worth of exposure on the Pleaides (a.k.a. M 45). I fear the result (viewed at 100%) is quite noisy. More integration (more exposure) would probably help (because it improves signal-to-noise ratio), but I don't see any clear nights coming in the forecast, so this is it for now.

Camera: A7R IV (unmodified), ISO 800

Mount: Skywatcher Star Adventurer 2A (non-wifi)
Lens: Sony 135mm f/1.8 GM @ f/2.5
Lights: 30 x 2", 160 x 30"
Darks: 40 x 2" (oops), 40 x 30"
Flats: 40
Filters: none

Stacked in DSS; cropped and background extracted, and Starnet++ applied to remove stars, in Siril; nebula stretched using Seti Astro's standalone statistical stretch tool; stars stretched in Siril; recombined in Photoshop with some noise reduction, sharpening and saturation.



And what to me might be even more fun, removing the stars (using Starnet++ mentioned above), and just looking at the interstellar dust, or Integrated Flux Nebula (IFN).

Moonshot, Granada, Spain, 11-05-2024

Harm vb wrote: Nice!! I haven't seen a moon for weeks, due to the grey weather

If there is even small gaps in the clouds, you might be able to see the moon...

Supermoon behind clouds

α1 + Sony FE 5.6-6.3/200-600 G OSS @ 600 mm, f/6.3, 1/160 s, ISO 6400

And I have to tell a story about this photo: I was heading to do grocery shopping, but once I got on the yard, I saw this moon. So back to upstairs get a camera and take photos. After a while I decided I got enough photos and went home and swapped the camera into shopping bag. After walking towards the shopping centre I noticed that perhaps I should have taken look also to the other direction as there was magnificient sunset coloured clouds. I didn't return home to fetch a proper camera to capture these, but in retrospect perhaps I should have done so, since the few mobile phone photos were quite disapointing...