[graaja]

Originally Posted by GTO

Going to the top of our homepage today . I got to say something, Graaja = we always learn something new from your threads. Even your Fitness Thread was an eyeopener in so many ways for us health freaks.

Thank you so much for the kind words!! It is a pleasure to share these experiences with fellow TBHPians. All this is possible due to the wonderful platform that is TBHP. And I thank you for creating such a wonderful platform!

Originally Posted by rajesh1868

Wonderful graaja. Really enjoyed. I always thought it was just a telescope and a camera. Thanks for the detailed steps and also your journey.

Thank you so much for the kind words!

Originally Posted by RSUDARSANAN

Super Ganesh.
Left me seeing stars, literally and figuratively.
Sky is no longer your limit.
Cheers

Thank you so much for the kind words Chief! Let us plan a meet soon in a dark site and do some star gazing.

Originally Posted by megazoid

Read through it. Will need a bit more time for assimilation. Thanks for putting this together.

Let us definitely plan a star gazing meet soon.

Originally Posted by Dr.AD

Wow. What an amazing thread! Thank you very much graaja for taking efforts to document this and putting up this thread...

By the way, it is purely because of team-bhp that I ever got to meet such a personality as Graaja. Else I would have never got a chance to know him. This is the power of team-bhp!

Thank you so much for the kind words Dr.AD. You are too kind! You have been a big inspiration as well in many fields like AI, chess, and I am fortunate to have you as a friend. +100 to your words about TBHP. Were it not for TBHP, I would not have met you, Chief, Robi, KK, Jay and everyone in the gang. In fact, more than 50% of great friends (in Coimbatore and Bangalore) I made in life are because of TBHP.

Originally Posted by 4WheelPilot

...After playing around with my Celestron Binocular and with the clear skies these days, I am getting the itch to upgrade to a Telescope and if I get one someday, your thread will be a trigger for that

Thank you so much for your most kind words. It is great to know you are into star gazing with your Celestron binoculars. I am sure you will upgrade to a telescope soon!

Originally Posted by mallumowgli

There are no half measures with you coach. The way you take up each activity and even the way you put a thread. Thorough to the core.

Thank you so much for the kind words. You will most definitely see my spans in our group

[Jeroen]

Excellent write up! Fascinating stuffThanks very much. I like you approach to getting the right equipment straight away and not settling for less. I think that is a valuable lesson that applies for many different situations and hobbies alike.

I must admit I know next to nothing when it comes to looking up in the sky. I can’t even identify the polar star. The moon I do get! Most of the time.

How do you setup to catch a certain image. Do you use charts or tables to point your camera in the correct orientation initially and then fine tune?

The image stabilisation is basically by moving the lens (I.e. to track the object). Is there any use for additional in camera stabilisation? There are some theories that it never works on a tripod, but I have never experienced it. Just wondering if tracking and in camera stabilisation working together might give better results. But that is perhaps a theoretical approach with no practical application.

Jeroen

[V.Narayan]

Graaja, Wow, WOW, WOW. I really admire the thoroughness and sheer professionalism with which you pursue your interests, be it running or dieting or or farming or astronomy. Thank you for being so generous with your time and sharing of your knowledge - always written down in lucid simple way. Loved reading your thread. Looking forward to seeing your photos of the universe. So awe inspiring. God bless you.

[batterylow]

Its been said a million times and I say it again, the sheer amount of dedication, thoroughness and research you apply to every endeavor you take is unrivalled.

Can we plan for a star gazing event some day(night)?

[tirumalavoleti]

Amazing details and the technology behind.

Thanks for sharing it here and making us aware.

Used to wonder how the nebula and other interstellar objects are captured. Purchased a small telescope which is capable to see the moon surface. On a bright full moon day with out clouds, able to see the surface and its a perfect happy moment. But did not know how to capture that in a photo to share it with friends.

Now able to co relate all the aspects of telescope, camera and software to process. Definitely big information for me. Thanks again

[vishnurajanme]

How much the whole setup cost?

[Eshan Joshi]

Hey Graaja,

Thank you for the detailed thread. The information was really useful.

I really never knew that such a hobby existed. Really happy to see that you are enjoying it. The extra boot space of your 3 series GT seems to be helping you for transporting your equipment.

Just a few questions . What do you do with these photos ? Do you share it on the internet or publish them somewhere or do you just keep it in an album for your self? And how often do you take these photographs?

Thank you.

[PSOPS]

wow what an awesome thread.

One of the reason I love reading Team-BHP. Really inquisitive on how much did the whole setup cost for you ?

[skyocean]

Thanks Graaja for the detailed explanation. Very nicely composed. I'm envious of your scope and gear that's a lot of high end stuff there

One of the things which fascinates me from childhood is Astronomy and I love stargazing. I started off with a Celestron Astromaster 130eq telescope and I briefly tried my hands at Astrophotography. It is very difficult indeed. I can understand the challenge in clicking a celestial object which is years away from Earth when both are in motion, It is as complex as it sounds. Your photos are really amazing and I'm a big fan already.

My scope is a manual one and I captured images using my Nikon DSLR + T adapter combination. The easiest one I could do is our moon for anything else I would have needed better capturing /processing equipment. That said the scope is good for viewing planets and other celestial bodies. Light pollution in the cities is too much and its impossible to use the scope these days. A good weekend drive like yours is the only way to go for stargazers henceforth.

Moon shot from telescope shot back in 2015 :


This hobby is a unique one indeed, it requires lot of patience and in-depth knowledge. If anyone is curious of the stars in the night sky and wants to spot them use Google Sky Map app on your phone , its free. It gives a real time location based Augmented Reality(AR) view of the sky and helps identifying the objects there.

[rahulananda]

Mind blowing capture of Nebula and Rosette. I am in awe with the pics and your setup. And thanks a ton for the detailed gear setup. I have been experimenting astrophotography with Canon 90D for a while, but light pollution plays a spoil sport and exposure adjustments leads to star streaking. But your guide has now given what aspects to consider. Thanks again.

[Invincible8789]

Good to have come across this wonderful write up! With every post of yours make me think to learn so many and to unlearn so many, can’t put it in words!

[graaja]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

Excellent write up! Fascinating stuffThanks very much. I like you approach to getting the right equipment straight away and not settling for less. I think that is a valuable lesson that applies for many different situations and hobbies alike.

How do you setup to catch a certain image. Do you use charts or tables to point your camera in the correct orientation initially and then fine tune?

The image stabilisation is basically by moving the lens (I.e. to track the object). Is there any use for additional in camera stabilisation? There are some theories that it never works on a tripod, but I have never experienced it. Just wondering if tracking and in camera stabilisation working together might give better results. But that is perhaps a theoretical approach with no practical application.

Thank you for the kind words Jeroen!

In visual astronomy where we are dealing with manually operated telescopes, we use reference stars and do something called star-hopping. This is done using some sky atlas. There are lots of apps for cell phones and also for computers. In astrophotography, locating objects is done using something called plate solving. My main imaging software N.I.N.A is capable of this. All I need to do is enter the object that I need to locate. The software then finds the co-ordinates in the sky from a database. It uses my latitude, longitude, date and time to extract relative location of that particular object in the sky. Then it issues a command to the Equatorial Mount to point to the location. Once the mount points to this location, there will still be some error (a few arc minutes) due to round off error in latitude and logitude location, polar alignment error etc. The camera takes a picture of the stars in this location and does something called plate solve. By comparing the image to star databases, it finds the absolute location where the telescope is now pointing. It then calculates the relative error between the desired location and the current location, and issues corrective signal to the mount. The mount then points to the correct location and centers the object in the field of view.

Other than the stabilization provided by the mount itself, no other stabilization is used. As we are looking at alignments within a single pixel, I guess mechanical stabilizations will be prohibitively expensive. I have not come across any such stabilizers. Instead the guiding process takes care of this stabilization.

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

Graaja, Wow, WOW, WOW. I really admire the thoroughness and sheer professionalism with which you pursue your interests, be it running or dieting or or farming or astronomy. Thank you for being so generous with your time and sharing of your knowledge - always written down in lucid simple way. Loved reading your thread. Looking forward to seeing your photos of the universe. So awe inspiring. God bless you.

Thank you so much for your kind words Narayan sir!

Originally Posted by batterylow

Its been said a million times and I say it again, the sheer amount of dedication, thoroughness and research you apply to every endeavor you take is unrivalled.
Can we plan for a star gazing event some day(night)?

Thank you so much for the kind words. Yes. Let us definitely plan for a star gazing event soon.

Originally Posted by tirumalavoleti

Amazing details and the technology behind.

Used to wonder how the nebula and other interstellar objects are captured. Purchased a small telescope which is capable to see the moon surface. On a bright full moon day with out clouds, able to see the surface and its a perfect happy moment. But did not know how to capture that in a photo to share it with friends.

Thank you for your kind words. To capture images from a telescope using cell phones, there is a method called eyepiece projection. In this method, a cell phone is attached to the eyepiece of a telescope and the image inside the eyepiece is directly captured on the cell phone. We can use this technique to shoot bright objects like moon and the planets. Below is one such product.

https://www.amazon.in/Smiledrive-Uni...6572689&sr=8-1

You can use this to fix your cell phone to the telescope and take pictures of moon and planets.

Originally Posted by vishnurajanme

How much the whole setup cost?

Originally Posted by PSOPS

Really inquisitive on how much did the whole setup cost for you ?

The setup I have at the moment has cost about 6 Lakhs.

Originally Posted by Eshan Joshi

Just a few questions . What do you do with these photos ? Do you share it on the internet or publish them somewhere or do you just keep it in an album for your self? And how often do you take these photographs?

As of now, I just publish these pictures in astrophotography groups. There is a dedicated website called astrobin where people around the world post their astrophotographs. My images are not yet of enough quality to post it there

This hobby is more for personal satisfaction and challenging our own self to overcome all the technical problems those faint objects millions of light years away pose.

Originally Posted by skyocean

One of the things which fascinates me from childhood is Astronomy and I love stargazing. I started off with a Celestron Astromaster 130eq telescope and I briefly tried my hands at Astrophotography. It is very difficult indeed. I can understand the challenge in clicking a celestial object which is years away from Earth when both are in motion, It is as complex as it sounds. Your photos are really amazing and I'm a big fan already.

My scope is a manual one and I captured images using my Nikon DSLR + T adapter combination. The easiest one I could do is our moon for anything else I would have needed better capturing /processing equipment. That said the scope is good for viewing planets and other celestial bodies. Light pollution in the cities is too much and its impossible to use the scope these days. A good weekend drive like yours is the only way to go for stargazers henceforth.

Wow. It is great to know you have a Celestron scope and are interested in Astrophotography. If your Nikon is video capable, you can take very good pictures of the planets - especially Venus, Mars, Saturn and Jupiter. This involves bringing the object inside the field of view of the telescope and take a video of 1 minute duration. During this time, you can gradually move the scope to keep the object in the field of view. Don't worry about keeping the object fixed at the same place. As long as it is in the field of view, it is enough.

Then use a software called PIPP to split the video into individual frames. This software will take individual frames, locate the object in each frame and anchor all the frames with the object in a fixed location. Then you can use another software called Autostakkert to pick the best of all these frames and stack these frames to bring out details of the object. Finally, there is another software called Registax that can bring out faint details (like ice cap in mars, clous of jupiter, rings of saturn etc) and bring them out.

There are lots of YouTube videos that show this method. Try it out. All the planet photographs that I took are based on this method, except the very first Saturn image which was a single exposure by pointing a point and shoot camera into the eyepiece.

Originally Posted by rahulananda

Mind blowing capture of Nebula and Rosette. I am in awe with the pics and your setup. And thanks a ton for the detailed gear setup. I have been experimenting astrophotography with Canon 90D for a while, but light pollution plays a spoil sport and exposure adjustments leads to star streaking. But your guide has now given what aspects to consider. Thanks again.

You can do wide field astrophotography with your Canon 90D with maybe a focal length of 200mm. Take very short exposures of less than 5 seconds. Take 100+ exposures like this and then use software like Deep Sky Stacker (DSS) to stack these images to get one single image. Then you can use regular photo applications like Photoshop or GIMP to work on brightness contrast etc. With this method, you can shoot some bright objects like Orion Nebula, star clusters like Pleiades, Hercules cluster etc.

If you get serious, you can then get a basic tracker that can track the objects. These are relatively cheaper (cost about 30K) and you can do exposures upto a minute with these trackers.

[skyocean]

Originally Posted by graaja

Then use a software called PIPP to split the video into individual frames. Another software called Registax that can bring out faint details (like ice cap in mars, clous of jupiter, rings of saturn etc) and bring them out.

This is very useful information Graaja, thanks once again for the precise sequence of things to do.I will definitely try this soon and post my feedback.

May I ask what's next on the menu ? Do keep us posted if you are planning a stargazing trip anytime in the near future .

[omranga98]

The images are incredible!
I don't have the equipment or much knowledge about this but took these two shots in Darjeeling using my OnePlus 6 and a gorilla tripod
and edited it a bit using a phone app called Snapseed!

[rahulananda]

Originally Posted by graaja

You can do wide field astrophotography with your Canon 90D with maybe a focal length of 200mm. Take very short exposures of less than 5 seconds. Take 100+ exposures like this and then use software like Deep Sky Stacker (DSS) to stack these images to get one single image. Then you can use regular photo applications like Photoshop or GIMP to work on brightness contrast etc. With this method, you can shoot some bright objects like Orion Nebula, star clusters like Pleiades, Hercules cluster etc.

If you get serious, you can then get a basic tracker that can track the objects. These are relatively cheaper (cost about 30K) and you can do exposures upto a minute with these trackers.

Thank you for the suggestions. Now that I have moved to my hometown the light pollution is relatively low. Will definitely give it a shot based on your suggestions. I was thinking of 50mm at 5secs as my lens is kit 18-135mm. I once tried 135mm with exposure around 10 to 15 secs, but led to star streaks. But let me try 5 secs exposures and stacking.