Posted on 07/08/2019 9:11:35 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Cloud-free skies are expected on Tuesday night across much of the interior West, southern Plains and Northeast, leading to uninterrupted viewing.
Saturn will be above the horizon all night long, rising in the southeast around sunset and slowly gliding across the sky before setting in the southwest around dawn.
No special equipment is needed to see the planet as it is bright enough to see with the unaided eye, but a telescope is required to be able to see the planet's famous rings. These rings are made up of pieces of ice, dust and debris orbiting the planet.
Jupiter just reached opposition in June and is still bright in the sky most of the night, out-shining all of the stars and even Saturn.
Once you have located Jupiter in the southern sky, it should be easier to spot Saturn. The two planets are not right next to each other, but Saturn should be off to the left of Jupiter.
(Excerpt) Read more at upi.com ...
Is that really your image?
Yes, that's really mine. Here are a couple more. This one also near Cabezon Peak.
This one was taken about 40 miles south of Mountainair, NM at 1:30AM right at moonrise.
My 11yo was discussing our (me/daughter) occasional astronomical discussions and nighttime viewing with her science teacher. The teacher informed my daughter that she must be confused because no part of the Milky Way can be seen from earth...
What would we do without public school teachers?
Sounds like a good argument for home schooling!
Deep in the heart of New Mexico, stars are also big & bright!
Far greater in height but not sure about circumference, Cabezon Peak is mindful of Ayers Rock in Australia.
Very nice, one or the other of your flics may become wallpaper!
Mind sharing your settings?
I’ve tried a few night time shots, never have quite hit on the right combination of ISO/Aperture/Shutter Speed for star shots. Looking at your shots, I’m guessing you’re using a really wide aperture. Can’t be long exposure, anything over about 5 seconds and I get star trails. Short, but obviously oblong stars instead of dots. I’ve gotten a number of nice moon pictures, but not so good on the star shots.
I might try and take the camera out for awhile, maybe even the telescope, but mosquitoes will carry me away this time of year, so I probably won’t stay out long...
First time I spotted Saturn it was by accident, using a small 2 1/4 inch refractor scope. After changing eyelenses I pointed it at a bright “star”, told a friend “I think I’ll look at that one”, and wondered what the hell...as I started to re focus it started to look like an oval, not the round dot I expected. Turned out it was Saturn, and that year it was closer to earth than it will ever get for something like 75 years. A 6 year old kid today might live long enough to see it that close again...
Now I have an Orion 6 inch I can use, much better scope. Might get together with a friend, he has an Orion 12 inch (both Dobson mounts) and set up in his yard. No respite from mosquitoes though, his place is same as here. I got the Orion that same year, so I got to see both at closest approach, and a total lunar eclipse.
Saturn does have a “closest approach” every year, but that’s a relative term. In about 2003, it was at the closest it will be for many years. In its oval orbit, every year it has a...oops, every orbit it has a period during which it is closer to earth than any other time. Due to a long cycle of orbital changes, that year it was closer than it gets for many years. Tonight earth will be between the Sun and Saturn.
The same year, 2003, Mars was also as close as it ever gets. I got to watch a major dust storm. That wasn’t very impressive, it just meant you could see no detail for a few weeks, but interesting still...my 6 inch scope gets little enough detail anyway. I can’t remember the exact numbers, but I think it will be around 75 years before Saturn is that close again, and I think it said a lot longer for Mars. A lot less orbital changes I guess, I’m not good at the technical explanations of astronomical objects...I know what it’s doing, I’m just not good at explaining it. In 2003, Mars was the closest it had ever been in 60,000 years, that happened to be the year I got a good telescope and was able to see it. Saturn was also as close as it ever gets for many years, but I don’t remember the time frame.
Beautiful pictures. Thank you! (Makes one want to move from suburbia with its nighttime views of city lights in the distance, telephone and cable lines, and about 3 stars)
Got my old Tele-Vue-102 sitting on the back porch ready to go.
8mm to 24mm Tele-Vue eyepiece should do the trick.
Never did astro-photography and too old to start.
Chief
That spot would be one heck of a Timeshare...
Thanks! Even where I live I have to drive a good bit to get to truly dark skys.
Wow, Incredible pictures. How do you do it?
The teacher apparently was caught up in the notion (reality) that we cannot of course directly see our own Milky Way as a spiral galaxy, as we see other such spiral galaxies, he/she apparently being unaware that we can at least see the frisbee-shaped Milky Way in which we live edge-on as a "milky" band that stretches across the sky in dark sky country, as a result of our residing within its flatten disc.
Wow!
Well, my settings probably wouldn't help if you're taking static, unguided pictures (but at the end I'll tell you how you can get decent images without a tracker). I used a full frame camera (Canon 6D) with a ultra-wide 14mm f2.8 lens. In the first and last pictures the ISO was 800 and exposure time was about 2minutes 7 seconds. The middle picture I used ISO 400 (less sensitive to light) but compensated with a longer exposure of 2 minutes 32 seconds. If you're wondering how I could take such long exposures without getting star trails, it's because I was using something called a star tracker. It is basically a mounting system that you align with true north (using Polaris as a reference), then, when you turn it on, you can take much longer exposures because the tracker rotates at the same rate as the stars, thus allowing the camera to track the stars. The downside is, whatever is in the foreground will get blurry as the foreground (landscape) will appear to be moving during exposure (because the camera is moving). For that reason, you sometimes need to take some static (non-guided) pictures just to get a clear, non-blurry foreground image which you then replace your blurry foreground with in Photoshop. (I only did that on the middle image).
The start tracker I use is the iOptron Star Guider Pro:
Ok, so what if you don't what to spend $500+ on a star tracker; how do you get decent images with much shorter exposure times? Well, as you probably figured out, the wider angle lens you can use the better as it will allow for longer exposures before star trails are obvious. Also, the more wide open the aperture the better. The lens I use (on a full frame camera) is the Rokinon 14mm f2.8. It is a manual focus lens, but when shooting stars, auto focus won't work anyway. You usually will want to set your aperture as wide open as possible to allow as much light as possible (f2.8 in my case). You can find good used copies on Ebay for under $300. For night sky photography it is a very decent lens that gets the job done at a reasonable price.
You will definitely need to have your camera on a tripod. Then, to set focus so that the stars are nice pinpoints you will want to zoom in on a bright star as much as your camera will allow, then manually adjust focus so as to get that star to appear as small as possible (this will not be full hard-stop at infinity). If your camera has "live view" use that as it is easier to tell when the focus star is at it's smallest - difficult to do through the optical viewfinder. It will usually be somewhere just short of infinity. Once you have the focus set - DON'T TOUCH IT.
Next, you have to determine what is the longest exposure you can take before you will start getting star trails visible. Well, this of course depends on the focal length of your lens. Also, remember if you are using a crop-frame camera (like a Canon 7D, or 80D, etc), then your effective focal length is about 1.6x (I think it's 1.5x for Nikon) of your lens' focal length. In other words, if you had a 14mm lens on a crop frame camera, then you have to treat that like a 14 x 1.6 = 22mm focal length. There are a couple different formulas floating around on the internet. One you will probably see is the "rule of 600". I'll tell you right off, that rule doesn't work well for today's digital cameras. A better rule is the rule of 500. (Still not perfect, but better). Basically, you divide 500 by the "full frame equivalent" of your lens' focal length to get the max time in seconds you can expose before you get star trails. It's not a perfect rule but will get you in the ball park. Your results may vary.
Example: I have a full frame camera and a 14mm lens. Using the 500 rule: 500/14 = ~36 seconds.
Example 2: I have a crop sensor camera with a 14mm lens. 500/ (1.6x14) = 500/22 = 23 seconds.
So, as you can see, the focal length has a significant impact on exposure time you can get away with.
There is another rule that is even better called the NPF rule. That one is a more complicated formula that takes into account the aperture, the focal length and the "pixel pitch" of your camera. Fortunately there is an iPhone / Android App called "PhotoPills" that will calculate this for you. It is a much more restrictive formula. For example, using my Canon 6D with a 14mm lens at f2.8, the "500 rule" says I can expose for up to 36 seconds, while the NPF rules says I should really keep my exposure limited to under about 20 seconds. I would say, start with the 500 rule, then look at the results. If you're not happy or see too much star trails, back off the time by increments of maybe 5 seconds until you find a shutter speed where you're happy with the results.
Ok, so if you can only take an exposure for a short time without using tracking, how do you get that dramatic detail? Well, the only option if you are shooting wide open is to increase the ISO. If you took static shots with the ISO I used (400 / 800) the results would not look very good. I'd say start with ISO 3200 and go up or down from there (probably up) to get results you're happy with. Of course with higher ISO comes a penalty in the way pf increased "noise" which will tend to make the picture look "muddy." But there is a solution for this too! Instead of taking a single, say 25 second exposure, take a succession of 15-20 exposures as quickly as you can. Then, there are programs available called "stackers" that will allow you to pull in all 15 or 20 exposures and it will "stack" them. Somehow the program is smart enough to determine what is noise and what is an actual star, and it does a fantastic job of eliminating the noise. The programs available depend on whether you have a iMac or a PC. For iMac there is a program called "Starry Landscape Stacker" that I like. There are similar programs for PC/Windows. But if you stack several photos and thus eliminate the noise, you can still get dramatic photos even without the tracker.
Bet you thought it was going to be a simple answer 8^)
See Reply #36 to Palo Pete
Great pic ! I’ve actually been there (en route to Chaco Canyon). Was trying to get into see the old Cabezon ghost town, but the gates were locked. :-(
Naah, never too old to start something like that.
Great post! Thanks.
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