Yesterday’s image of M44 Praesepe, or the “Beehive” cluster. This was taken using my old 135mm Pentax fitting lens, with a mild Barlow in the Pentax to Nikon adapter. I use it because it’s faster than my other lenses; f/2.8 as opposed to f/5.6 on a telephoto set at 200mm, or f/4.5 on a zoom set at 70mm. The image quality is not as good as that from the Nikon zoom set at 200mm, but exposure times are much shorter. I need to be patient!

The image is from a total exposure of 240s, and (at last!) with a flat field applied. I took a set of twilight sky flats for all my lenses, so that I can do more experiments.

After a reasonably successful test of eyepiece projection using my old 3 inch refractor, I decided to try again with a bigger distance between the eyepiece and the camera focal plane. Continue reading →

Yet another clear evening! A new adapter for my old Pentax fitting lens had arrived, so I was keen to try that; however I had also found an ancient eyepiece for a microscope that fits in the camera adapter for my old 3 inch telescope, so this is a photo of the whole Moon taken with that setup. Continue reading →

Yet another unexpected clear evening – these weather forecasters need to get their act together. I’m not complaining about the clear sky though as it meant more tests. Here’s the open cluster Messier 35. Continue reading →

An unexpected clear evening (the weather forecasts are hopeless at present) meant a happy couple of hours testing the telescope drive for photography, with some success. The header image is the Orion nebula (M42), which can be compared with the previous version of this posted on 27 February. Continue reading →

After playing around with odd astronomical photos over the last few years (lunar eclipse, comet Neowise, various planetary conjunctions) I decided that I needed to make things a bit easier.

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Mars was passing fairly close to the Pleiades this year so a clear night gave an opportunity for a photograph, and a test of my new alt-az drive as a static camera mount. Continue reading →

A nice clear night meant a chance to try out my nice new camera / telescope drive (alt-az) as a static mount. This photo was taken with a telephoto lens, 200mm fl, f/5.6, 1/2000 sec exposure, ISO 3200. I still need to do lots of playing around with settings to get the best results.

This is described in most places as the “Great Conjunction” because it doesn’t happen very often. The closest approach of Jupiter and Saturn in the sky (they’re a long way apart, but almost in the same direction) is today. It’s cloudy though, so here’s a photo from yesterday. They don’t get much closer.

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