Nature Photography

[Yard Farmer]

Sunflowers this morning.
View attachment 3629714

Your photos never cease to amaze me.

Beautiful!

 

[HorseGirlAbby]

Your photos never cease to amaze me.

Beautiful!

Thank you!

 

[mdees88]

Got home from work at 530 this morning. When I got out of my truck , I looked up and there was the Orion constellation shining bright in a quite dark sky (but the sun was getting ready to come up). I ran inside, grabbed my camera, set it up on the Orion Nebula, and got some shots of it before the sky started to brighten up.

This is a stack of 220ish frames shot at 1/3s F7.1 ISO 6400 at 500mm.

Quite an improvement over my last attempt, lol. This is still without a tracker. Hopefully Wednesday I will be able to start shooting some tracked images....

EDIT: I tried again this morning (the following morning) with a 400mm lens. I shot at .8s F5.6 ISO 2000 and I was able to pull more detail out of it. .8s was a little too fast but the lower ISO helped bring out the detail, I think.

 

[mdees88]

The star tracker has arrived. Now I just need some clear sky's. Scattered clouds made imaging difficult last night, plus I'm learning my way through this thing.

I was able to capture and stack 48, 25" second images @ F6.3 ISO 2000.

Definitely better than untracked, but I still have a lot of room to improve...

 

[Kiki]

This thread was nominated...come vote for it here:

https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/week-1-favorite-thread-poll-vote-now.1598750/post-27183249

 

[mdees88]

The orion and running man nebulae from very early this morning. Going after the horsehead nebula tomorrow morning...

 

[mdees88]

Here's my first attempt at shooting the flame and horsehead nebula. My camera battery died, and some dew started forming on the lens, so I was only able to stack 26 images and I wasn't able to shoot any calibration frames either. Looking forward to trying again in a few days...

 

[mdees88]

I've taken a few more astro images this past week. What I like about astrophotography is you can always improve and I will get to compete against myself over time to get better images of the same targets. Some of these first attempts are a little rough but with more iteration time, improved technique, and better atmospheric conditions, they will get MUCH better. Here are a few from the last couple days....

The sun...

The eastern veil nebula...

The lagoon and trifid nebulae...

The helix nebula (a.k.a The Eye of God)...

You know....

 

[azurbanclucker]

I'm shopping filters today. What are you using for a solar filter?

I figured out that Shiprock's only about a 6 hour drive and will be in the full "ring of fire" path on the 14th. If I can make THAT happen, it'll be fan-freaking-tastic.

 

[mdees88]

I'm shopping filters today. What are you using for a solar filter?

I figured out that Shiprock's only about a 6 hour drive and will be in the full "ring of fire" path on the 14th. If I can make THAT happen, it'll be fan-freaking-tastic.

Nice. I'm planning on driving to San Antonio if the weather is decent and catching it myself. I got an image of a partial eclipse back in 2017. I hate I didn't travel to see totality. I wasn't too far away. It will be a 10-11hr drive for me this time.

My goal is to get some images like these (not mine) from Lighthound on FredMiranda.com next April, and I'm going to use this annular eclipse as a practice run. It will be 10 years before we get another one....

I'm using a thousand oaks optical full aperture solarlite polymer filter.

It's a slip on (not threaded) so I can snatch it off quick to photograph totality on next April's eclipse.

https://thousandoaksoptical.com/shop/solar-filters/full-aperture-solarlite-polymer/

They're not terribly expensive but you can diy one for about 1/4 the price by buying a sheet of the solar film and depending on the size of the sheet, you'll have enough material to make multiple and put them on binoculars, etc. (For the picture of the eclipse above, I just taped a pair of solar glasses to the end of my lens, lol) They sell the film on amazon for $15-30.

https://www.amazon.com/Thousand-Oak...hvlocphy=&hvtargid=pla-4584482468681710&psc=1

Here's the kicker though. Most all of these filters and films are solar viewing safe, optical density of 5.0 which is 15.5 stops. The issue is they block so much light that your shutter speed is going to be annoyingly slow. I had to take my ISO to 800 on that image, just to get 1/200th of a second shutter speed at F/10. Normally it's around 1/50th or so with a low iso.

This is not a deal breaker for the eclipse but I want to shoot some ISS transits also and I'm going to need a lot more shutter speed for that.

So if you look hard on the internet there is a solar film for photography that is NOT viewing safe but safe for the camera. It is called astrosolar photo film OD 3.8 by baader planetarium. It is only 12 stops so you'll get a lot more SS but you can NOT look through the optical viewfinder on your DSLR, only live view.

I ordered an 8x12 sheet of it from alpine astronomical on Sept 21. I emailed them 3 days ago and she said it was supposed to ship that day and they were understaffed and were swamped with orders from the eclipse. I still haven't received it yet but I'm going to DIY a slip on filter with it. Might not use it for the eclipse but I'm going to use it for ISS transits....

https://alpineastro.com/products/astrosolar-photo-film-od-3-8?variant=32120993251405



Make sure you get right in the center of the path of totality, and I would recommend checking an app or website like astropheric www.astrospheric.com to monitor cloud cover to try and pick a good spot the day of....