Galileo's Camera

My subscription with SLOOH is still active and I thought that I will shoot through it while the monsoon season is over in Sri Lanka. My target of choice this time was the Pleiades (M45). The Pleiades, also known as Severn Sisters are an open star cluster. While it is a "cluster" the distance between the stars are massive. If you take two main stars of it, Alcyone and Merope, Alcyone is about  443 lightyears away from earth while Merope is about 380 lightyears away. The actual cluster also contains about 1000 stars in actuality.   Single shot of 5min exposure. Canary Three 11" telescope (SLOOH)   10x5min stack. Canary Three 11" telescope (SLOOH) As I've mentioned earlier on, I don't feel that I am doing anything worthwhile when I am shooting with SLOOH. It's a matter of just scheduling the photo and waiting for it to come out, then stack. I was therefore quite happy when I figured I may have actually caught a meteor across the frame. The photos were taken...

As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, I got the entry level subscription to SLOOH. The "Student" level subscription at SLOOH costs you 50 USD per year and allows you to piggyback on 5 separate "missions". You can also choose 5 missions from the SLOOH catalog instead of piggybacking as well. However unlike higher level subscriptions, this does not allow total control over the telescope. Horeshead Nebula, Barnard 33 (in the middle) and NGC 2023 reflection nebula near top left. Stack of 15x5min exposures using SLOOHs Chile Two telescope. The Chile Two telescope is a 17" telescope. Compared to my own NexStar 4SE, this one has more than 16x light gathering power. But even with that much of light, you still need to stack a few images to bring out the details. 5min exposure of Barnard 33 using SLOOH's Chile Two telescope. As you can see above, a single 5min exposure of the Barnard 33 still has some details but lacks contrast and brightness. While you can inc...

Merge of multiple frames - Saturn (L) and Jupiter (R) on 25th December 2020. The angular separation is about 25'. Shot with a Canon 450D on a Nexstar 6SE. Equipment courtesy of Eranga Ganegala, The year of 2020 was not a great year in many ways. But it was not without its own silver lines. Back in July 2020, we saw the brightest comet in 23 years, the Comet NEOWISE (C/2020 F3) and further before in June, some parts of the world were able to witness an annular solar eclipse. On December 14th, people in Chile and Argentina were able to view a total solar eclipse, which would be the last total solar eclipse till 2024. The best of the events however, is probably the Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. A conjunction is when two or more astronomical bodies get very close to each other from a visible point of view. Given that the stars are in a fixed position (unless you observe for over a period of say, ten to hundred thousand years), this refers to objects that are moving across ...

Disclaimer: I didn't do anything other than clicking a few buttons to get this photo. But this is the kind of photo you can get by using SLOOH's remote telescopes. M42 - Orion Nebula. 3x5min via SLOOH Chile Two (17") telescope Following through my hunt for telescope-as-a-service offerings, my next evaluation was SLOOH. Originally started back in 2002, SLOOH's telescopes became available to the public in 2004. SLOOH currently operates two sites, Chile and Canary Islands and has a total of 8 telescopes. SLOOH is not just a remote telescope or telescope-as-a-service offering. It also has a community set up where remote operators, astronomers, SLOOH staff can discuss various aspects of astrophotography as well as astronomy. SLOOH does not have a free access like the MicroObservatory. It's minimum plan starts at 50 USD per annum and you basically piggyback on missions that are set up by others and extract the same photos they take. They offer a 100 USD per annum and a 3...

For 2 years now, I've been postponing the decision to buy a telescope. My reluctance was based on two things; the nearly 1500 USD cost that I would be spending on it and the really sketchy weather that we have in Sri Lanka which makes it very difficult to get clear skies. The more I read and researched about how the amazing photos like the following are taken, the more I realised that my casual approach of just grabbing the telescope and going somewhere to do astrophotography isn't going to work. It's going to need some proper preparation. Photos like these require hours of shooting and at least a good one hour of prep work.

Comet NEOWISE became a pretty popular name among stargazers as well as non-stargazers in 2020. One of the main reasons why it was so popular was that it was one of the brightest comets in about 13 years (since the comet C/2006 P1 (McNaught) - which was a daylight comet as well).  Unlike for example the 9 comets that turned up in 2019 or the 19 that turned up in 2018 - which clearly not many knew about, NEOWISE was a naked eye comet.

When I covered the 21st June solar eclipse, I took 19 photos over roughly 3 hours to create a montage of Moon's path across the disc of the Sun. There were some private queries on how it was done, so I figured might as well explain it all in a post.

Thesolar eclipse of 21 June 2020 appeared to Sri Lanka as a partial eclipse. The timing of this wasn't that great given that the area I live is under the monsoon season and there is absolutely no guarantee of clear skies. The day before the eclipse however, it was extremely sunny. But things got complicated when two different weather sites gave two completely different predictions for the day of the eclipse.

When I planned the year, I planned my vacation travel to be in June so that I can stop over in Oman to view the solar eclipse that is happening on 21st June 2020. While the eclipse is viewable in my own country, Sri Lanka, we can only see a partial eclipse, whereas in Oman you can view an annular eclipse.

It's the traditional new year time here again in Sri Lanka. I find this new year celebration fascinating because it is celebrated at a particular time of the day (which changes every year) as opposed to midnight. The tradition is celebrated among Budhhists as well as Hindus in Sri Lanka. You can read more about how the timings are calculated in two of my old posts: http://galileoscamera.blogspot.com/2013/04/math-of-astrology-1.html http://galileoscamera.blogspot.com/2013/04/math-of-astrology-2-sinhalahindu-new.html

No, that was not a spelling mistake. It is actually part of the partial-shadow of the Earth. During a lunar eclipse, the Moon travels through the shadow of the Earth. If we manage to catch the entire movement of the Moon along with the shadow Earth casts on it, we can get something quite amazing, the actual shape of the Earth. Part of the shadow of Earth, as seen during the lunar eclipse on 10th Jan 2020

With the very first full moon of the year 2020, we were lucky to have a partial lunar eclipse. However, if you were a casual observer who sat up late to watch the eclipse, your response to this probably would have been "disappointing". Partial Lunar Eclipse at maximum - 10th January 2020 Canon 550D, 70-300mm at 300. F5.6 1/1000 ISO200 Penumbral lunar eclipses are usually a bit difficult observe as the contrast isn't that great. Unlike in solar eclipses where what we see is the silhouette of the Moon, in a lunar eclipse what we see is our own shadow. In fact, it is not the shadow itself, but the lighter shadow on the outside. Earth's umbra, penumbra and the Moon When the Moon is in the umbra, or the full shadow of the Earth, we get total lunar eclipses. When the Moon is in the penumbra, we get penumbral lunar eclipses. But these can be subdivided too; if only a part of the Moon is going through the umbra, then it becomes a partial lunar eclipse. Simi...

On 26th December 2019, we  witnessed an annular solar eclipse. Almost always, a solar eclipse doesn't come alone; it comes along with a lunar eclipse. And sure enough, nearly two weeks later, we have a penumbral lunar eclipse. Like the solar eclipse, this too is visible to Sri Lanka. In a penumbral lunar eclipse, the Moon goes through the penumbra, or the partial shadow of the Earth. Unlike the total lunar eclipse Sri Lankans were able to witness back on 28th June 2018, this will not be a "blood moon", it will simply become partially dark during the period. The lunar eclipse will start at 17:07 UTC (or 22:37 SL time on 10th) and will end at 21:12 UTC (or 02:42 SL time on 11th ). The greatest eclipse is at 19:21 UTC (or 00:51 SL time on 11th ). You can find more details about it at http://www.eclipsewise.com/lunar/LEprime/2001-2100/LE2020Jan10Nprime.html .  If you were curious about the author of that website, Fred Espenak is an American astrophysicist who has work...

Ever since my NexStar 4SE broke down irreparably my astrophotography work came to a standstill. While I could've continued a little more with my 400mm telephoto lens, a particular problem I met with it meant that that's also out of question. When I learned that there was a solar eclipse on 26th of December 2019 and that it is visible to the northern part of Sri Lanka, I thought this might be a good time to may be try and get back to it. Thanks to my dad, I had an exposure to astronomy from a very early age. If I am not mistaken, the very first solar eclipse that I witnessed was on 11th Sep 1988. This was a partial eclipse. My second was again a partial eclipse, 24th Oct 1995. This one was special in a way that I used the most rudimentary method of observing a solar eclipse, using a basin full of water. I did skip the eclipse in 1999 but did checkout the one on 03rd Oct 2005. Skipped again in 2008 and observed the annular eclipse of 15th Jan 2010 as a partial one. This is th...

When I was processing the photo of the Magellanic Clouds , I noticed that four of the photos had a light trail going across it. As these are long exposure photos, a light trail means a travelling object. The light streak - Composite shot of 4x10s There are many types of illuminated travelling objects in the night sky. They can vary from natural objects to different types of man-made objects. 1. Meteors The only extra-terrestrial natural object to make star trails on a long exposure photo like this one is a meteor. During a meteor shower, you will be able to capture many trails like this during the span of an hour. One of my wishes for a very long time has been to capture a meteor shower on camera. 2. Airplanes/helicopters/drones - flying machines There is a host of man-made objects that are not necessarily space borne that can cause a light streak. These include all the flying machines invented by man. In the past, these were limited to airplanes and helicopters. But than...

Magellanic clouds are two irregular galaxies that were once thought to be the closest galaxies to the Milkyway. The two galaxies are situated in the southern hemisphere and may have been first observed by the Khosians. However, the first written evidence of the two clouds appears in 964AD in a book by Abd al Rahman al Sufi. The Large Magellanic Cloud, which is not visible from his native area, was referred to him as Al Bakr, the White Ox. Today, the two clouds are known by the name of the explorer Ferdinand Magellan. LMC, SMC and Achernar - 13 shots of 15sec 5.6F 18mm. Canon 550D. Location: Kirindy Forest Lodge, Madagascar The Small Magellanic Cloud (NGC 292) is located around a declination of -72 0 , which means anyone beyond 18 0 northwards from the equator will not be able to spot it. The Larger Magellanic Cloud, which interestingly lacks an NGC (or other formal numbering), consists of a multitude of nebulae and globular clusters, and is located between the declinations -...

I've been using a Celestron NexStar4SE for about five years now and have tried photographing various types of sky objects. The best photos I have so far have been of planets. My rig for these have been the following: Celestron NexStar 4SE Canon 550D unmodded Celestron 93635-A T-Adapter for NexStar 4GT Celestron T-ring for Canon EOS camera Samyang 2x teleconverter Along with these and shooting on 640x480 movie crop mode on the camera, you can get pretty decently sized photos of the plantes such as the following. Saturn through Nexstar 4SE, Canon 550D via Samyang 2x converter and 640x480 movie crop mode shooting. However I always had doubts about the optics of the Samyang 2x converter. It was built to go with the Samyang 500mm mirror lens and wasn't exactly built for the purpose of astrophotography. My choice of replacement was the Celestron 2x Barlow. The Celestron 2x Barlow however comes with its own set of new requirements. While the Samyang 2x converter could ...

Supermoon was a term that turned up in various social media news items in the recent past. While obviously sparking an interest among the general public, it drew some criticism from prominent figures in astronomy like Neil deGrass Tyson ( http://time.com/5046984/neil-degrasse-tyson-goes-on-epic-rant-about-tonights-supermoon-calls-it-an-embarrassment/ ) on how the term is a major exaggeration of reality. What does supermoon mean? The term supermoon has turned out to mean that Moon appears bigger than usual. This happens because the orbit of the Moon around the Earth is not a circle, it is infact an ellipse. At its closest point to Earth, the Moon is about 360,000km away where as at its furthest, it is about 405,000km away. For comparison, the Earth it self is about 12,600km across (diameter). It looks like the Moon swings at least four Earths towards and away, and that is clearly a big swing. So why do the astronomers claim that it is not a big deal? While the difference in the...