Saturday 29 June 2013

Ring Nebula - my first deep sky object

Well it isn't fully correct, my very first deep sky target was the Orion Nebula but it isn't that hard to find and at winter time that is one of the easiest objects to admire.
But now that I managed to locate (with huge effort invested - not easy at all) Ring Nebula I must say this is my first one. Because it isn't that obvious to locate therefore it was the very first real challenge of mine.
Dissapointment in a way cos every novice astronomer have to face the fact - these objects do not look shiny and colorful through your scope, but faint and rather bluish/greyish. Also interesting fact that you need to aim looking to the object's surroundings to see the actual object sharp. It has a lot to do with human eye, we can't collect so wide spectrum of light through the scope that's why they look bluish...
Exceptions are astrophotos. A camera (dslr or ccd) is able to collect sufficient amount of light to reveal colors.
This is my first real deep sky photo with a Canon 600D. Not super at all due lack of proper polar alignment. And also startrails can be seen too.
But the way this photo was taken is my first success.
I do not use laptop at all, only scope and my dslr. It worked perfectly on planetary imaging, you could clearly see the planet on the camera's screen and do the settings accordingly.
The story changes with deep sky photography. Namely you can't see s**t. So you aim the scope roughly according to your finder scope, focusing is extremely frustrating because you can't see what you're doing.
The only way to make sure focus is correct to take several shots and check them on camera's screen immediately afterwards. So it requires HUGE amount of patience. Doesn't work without it.
All in all my final result is here. Not many objects can be seen from my back garden due tree obstruction. SkySafari app showed that theoretically I should be okey with Ring Nebula.
It is only a sinlge 10sec shot at ISO 800. On that night I took a few shots but when I checked them on camera screen couldn't discover anything and already acknowledged my first failure....
So next day uploaded them onto my PC and suddenly I realized that one of those shots actually captured somthing.

I really was over the.... hmmmm Ring Nebula lol

Ring Nebula




Ring Nebula by Hubble Telescope


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