See Saturn's rings Tuesday night as it makes closest pass by Earth

upi ^ | 07/08/2019 | Brian Lada

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks fieldmarshaldj.

[21twelve]

Beautiful photos.

I was just telling someone the other day that one of the coolest things was seeing Saturn’s rings “in person” through a small telescope. The local astronomy club came to the grade school one night for all the kids.

It really was something to see them for real, rather than from a photograph.

From the web:

In 1610, the year after Galileo Galilei turned a telescope to the sky, Galileo became the first person to observe Saturn’s rings, though he could not see them well enough to discern their true nature.

In 1655, Christiaan Huygens was the first person to describe them as a disk surrounding Saturn.

[Paleo Pete]

OK...guess I should have told you I'm very familiar with both photography and astronomy, I've been a photographer for over 30 years, into astronomy for 10 years or so. So I know what things like ISO mean, could have saved you some explaining. No way I could afford a tracker, I've heard of those but had no idea one was that costly. Also knew about stacking software, but can't get a decent enough shot to make it worth tinkering around with. I've seen some killer macro shots of insects done with stacking. Star shots are more difficult, mostly because tracking is not an option. If I had that available, it would make a big difference.

I've been using a standard tripod, Pentax K30 and either 50mm f1.4 and f1.7 lenses, or 28mm f2.8. Camera has a 12 second timer, I use that to eliminate vibrations from handling it. Also have a remote shutter trigger I can use, normally don't need it. Handy for getting hummingbird shots though, preset the focus and stand a few feet away.

I've tried everything except extremes, my camera does a very good job of limiting noise up to ISO1600, above that it gets iffy, but 3200 at night is acceptable and the 50mm lens can open up to f2 and still do an excellent job. Wide open it's not easy to focus and depth of field is long gone. Then again with star shots, depth of field is not a major issue... biggest problem is most lenses are not sharp wide open as they can be at smaller apertures. I use all manual lenses, the only auto focus I have is the "kit" lens that came with the camera.

I've done a few, but with my lenses, I think it was 5 seconds started to show star trails. At 4 seconds, black dark background and fairly decent star exposure, but nothing like the Milky Way showing like you got. I can't remember the exact settings I used, and I guess my star pictures are on the external hard drive, can't find them, only a few moon shots. Those turn out nice, but the moon is a different story, It's a lot brighter, I can get a good shot at ISO100, f8, 1/500 handheld with a 200mm lens (ancient Vivitar M42 screw mount job) That lens finally went belly up, I'm using a 135mm right now, haven't found another 200mm that will match the old one. I got one 3 years ago, not even close to the sharp pictures the original one got, exact same model lens.

Here's one of the moon shots, 200mm f4 M42 lens, ISO100, 1/500, f8, hand held, taken in June, 2013. I've taken a bunch of these, including several at 1/4 and 3/4 moon. I think a few at half too but those are probably also on the external hard drive. I put them on it because with over 100,000 pictures from the previous camera, Pentax K-x, and so far over 80,000 with this one, I would have run out of hard drive space long ago...So I just keep a portion of the best shots on the computer, the majority are on the external drive.

I had a boatload on Flickr, they decided to limit the number of pictures, and since I had too many I can't even get into my account to cull a few hundred...which reminds me I still need to go find out how to delete the whole account.



Thanks for the info, you brought up some points I had forgotten, since I don't have the equipment to do that I haven't even thought about it in a while. Stacking might be an option but it's not a major photography goal for me, I'm more into nature shots. I had completely forgotten about the tracking setup for a tripod...I've used telescopes with tracking. Mine is a 6 inch Dobson mount, no tracking available so pictures are out. I do a lot of birds, flowers and insects, wildlife whenever I can, and macro shots if I can get an insect or flower to sit still for a couple of minutes. I had a great location for some sunset shots in Louisiana, so far I haven't found anywhere as good around here. Nothing wide open enough unless I take a 30 minute drive. Now and then I'll set up a still life or two.

[JaguarXKE]

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. :-(

Closed / locked when we were there too. Darn. But I did find that old corral (with the help of Google Earth). It wasn't visible from the main dirt road that runs through the area. Had I not seen it on Google Earth I'd never have known it was there.

[JaguarXKE]

I would love to get a Dobson telescope one of these days. It’s on my bucket list.

[JaguarXKE]

Thanks. I remember seeing Saturn’s rings the first time with a kids’ reflector telescope when I was in grade school. It wasn’t much of a scope but you could still see Saturn’s rings and I think about 3 of Jupiter’s moons. One of these days I’d like to get a big old honking Dobsonian telescope.

[JaguarXKE]

Thanks!

[fieldmarshaldj]

At the time we went by (July 1993), I was going by an old ghost town book for what to visit in the area. I got the impression (later on at least) that you had to get permission from the owners to go onto that land to see the ruins. Sneaking in to see the ruins and landing yourself on the business end of a rifle is no way to vacation.

https://www.ghosttowns.com/states/nm/cabezon.html