2014 Astrofest Photo Contest.

[disco man]

Some of these photos just blow my mind. As a very useless photographer I look at photos like these with total respect. A bloke at the mine I work at is going to run me through some basics after I showed him some of my awesome(not):( photos. So with a bit of luck I will be able to post photos I actually have taken myself:)

2014 Astrofest photo winners | News.com.au (http://www.news.com.au/technology/science/photos-fnjwlcze-1226993336199?page=2)

[werdan]

It you decide to buy a Newtonian telescope and start take astro shots, make sure that the eyepiece is always on top of the telescope and stays at the top. The eyepiece locking screws aren't that grippy and DSLRs really don't like being dropped onto concrete.

[dullbird]

I'm always in ore of the astro stuff....

What sort of magnification do they use on the telescopes Werdan do you know? (when taking photos of the planets and the Milky Way and stuff..)

I loved the photo of the guy as silhouette on the beach with the night sky above. Almost showing the insignificance of man....awesome shot and so clear and crisp

[p38arover]

Great pix!

Looking at the sky from the city, one never gets to see just how many stars there really are.

My Pentax K-5 has an AstroTracer feature which uses the GPS to move the camera's image sensor to track the night sky when using long exposures (up to 5 minutes) without giving star trails.

I must try it one day.

ASTROTRACER | GPS UNIT O-GPS1 | RICOH IMAGING (http://www.ricoh-imaging.co.jp/english/products/o-gps1/astrotracer.html)

[werdan]

What sort of magnification do they use on the telescopes Werdan do you know? (when taking photos of the planets and the Milky Way and stuff..)


It's all a bit mixed up in those pics, the star fields are mostly wide-angle camera lenses, the shots of the moon could be done with a portable telescope. The nebula and Mars would be a larger more expensive field telescope or more likely one in an observatory.

Working out the magnification is a bit fiddly.
The way the mirrored telescopes work is the mirror collects the light and the eyepiece provides the magnification. The bigger the mirror, the more light, the better the quality of the image. The eyepiece then zooms in on that image on the mirror. The smaller the focal length of the eyepiece, the higher the magnification. On my cheap 4" Australian Geographic special, (IIRC) the 25mm eyepiece gives about 20x magnification. The 4mm eyepiece gives about 150x magnification.
With some cropping, the 25mm eyepiece gives me similar images as the "moon flowers" pic.

[Ausfree]

Top photo's there DM.:D Since digital photography superceded film the quality of photo's taken by amateurs exceeds a lot of professional work of a few years back. I moved onto another section of photo's taken on Mars by the Spirit Rover and was particularly taken by a shot of the sun setting on Mars and how small it appeared compared to here on Earth.:D