Galileo's Camera

This year is what probably you should call the Year of Astronomy. We are going to have three lunar eclipses, two solar eclipses (and one of them being a hybrid solar eclipse; an eclipse that appears as a total eclipse to some areas and an annular eclipse to other areas), three comets and Saturn at the closest to Earth. If you live in the right location, you are in for a treat! Unfortunately for me, two of the comets ( comet PANSTAARS and comet Lemmon ) escaped viewing due to bad weather. And yes, I missed them when they became visible back in April again. The first astronomical event I was able to photograph was the partial lunar eclipse on the 25th April 2013. I'm quite glad that I travelled to a reasonably remote location to view this, but well, the clouds were still a bother. All is not lost though: Partial Lunar Eclipse - 25th April 2013 The montage above is not a true multi-exposure shot. It is mostly "photoshopped" and you can see the cloud cover in the

Probably about an year or so back, I tried to capture Saturn. It didn't work out well because there was a collimation error in the telescope; Saturn turned out like two saucers placed face to face. Last week, when I visited a national park, I decided to try it once more, this time with the Samyang 500mm Mirror Lens. This also being around the time of the Saturn opposition (Saturn being on the opposite side of the Sun and being closest to Earth), I thought it would make a good target. Only two problems: Cloud cover and the Full Moon. Anyway, I did manage to capture a reasonably okish amateur shot of Saturn. I just wish I had my telescope with me. Saturn - Samyang Mirror Lens, Canon 550D with 800 ISO 1/50 shutter speed. I did try to take another shot with the 2x converter attached to the mirror lens, but it seems like the vibration of the shutter is too much for the whole apparatus. The photos taken with the converter turned out to be just elongated bright blobs of light.