CCD's & Astro-Photography

NGC891 image taken Aug 95

This is my old astrophoto page... Click here for my LX50 astrophoto page!

Here are a few images that I took on the evening of July 27 and Aug 9, 1996 with my CB245 CCD camera and the 6 inch F15 Mogey refractor that is located at the PSU astro club's Fox Hollow observatory.

I usually avoid the moon, but I decided to try a CCD image just for the fun of it. It was so bright that I had to use a 10% transmission ND filter and an extremely brief integration time.

Here are Jupiter and Saturn. The CB245 was stacked with a 2.8X Klee barlow at the prime focus for an effective focal ratio of F42 (252 inches). Images were processed with Richard Berrys' CB245PIX. The soft-planetary canned script, which uses two stages of gaussian masking, was used.

Even though the moon was near full, I decided to try a quick deep-sky shot. Here is a ring-shaped nebula you've probably seen before...
The "ring" was imaged at the prime focus, with an exposure time of only 15 seconds. The image is somewhat noisy because of the short integration time, but the central star is still visible. Attempts at longer integrations weren't so good because the scope just doesn't track accurately enough.

Early spring 1997. Comet Hale-Bopp had gotten me in the mood to shoot some more astro-photos. The first image is of M42, the Orion nebula, taken with the CCD camera and a 200mm telephoto lens.

The next picture was taken with a 50mm lens on a 35mm camera using Fuji 800 print film. This is the summer milky-way as seen pre-dawn in the middle of March! The pink spots are the Lagoon, Trifid and Eagle nebulae.

And of course there were lots of pictures of comet Hale-Bopp...

Here are a few CCD images. Note M31, the Andromeda galaxy in the lower right corner of the left image.

Here are some of my better film shots of Hale-Bopp. All were shot with a 50mm lens and Fuji Super G 800 35mm print film. Prints were scanned on a flatbed scanner.

Clicking on any of these will bring up a higher resolution version.

Note M31, the Andromeda galaxy in the photo to the right. The North American Nebula can bee seen above and in the upper right photo.

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