Telescope Picture

[2844az]

I was wondering about some of the pictures in various telescope magazines. They show a beautiful “Ring Nebula†with a 4 or 5 in. scope aperture. They say, “Here is a picture taken by this scope.†I wonder if you can actually see the Ring Nebula with your eyes looking through the scope as well as the picture portrays it, or is it that the time lapse of photography enhancing the picture. I use to take a lot of pictures of things (not astrophotography). But I know you can take a picture of an object at midnight and leave the shutter open 4-5 hrs. and the object will look like, it was almost taken in daylight. So the question is: Is that some type of advertisement hype or is that the actual view of what one would see looking through the scope? You know like some advertisement of the “maximum theoretical magnification†of a telescope, which really are not realistic. Thanks, Gary.

 

[adrenalynn]

The ring nebula is visible in my 5" under even mediocre skies. But it doesn't look like a bunch of stacked 3min exposures, either. http://jlrdesigns.com/astrophotography/M57/m57stack.jpg<br /><br />http://jlrdesigns.com/astrophotography/M57/m57-preprocess.jpg <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p>.</p><p><font size="3">bipartisan</font>  (<span style="color:blue" class="pointer"><span class="pron"><font face="Lucida Sans Unicode" size="2">bī-pär'tĭ-zən, -sən</font></span></span>) [Adj.]  Maintaining the ability to blame republications when your stimulus plan proves to be a devastating failure.</p><p><strong><font color="#ff0000"><font color="#ff0000">IMPE</font><font color="#c0c0c0">ACH</font> <font color="#0000ff"><font color="#c0c0c0">O</font>BAMA</font>!</font></strong></p> </div>

 

[heyscottie]

Astrophography, if done well, will always enhance the view over what you can actually see in the eyepiece. That makes it difficult to get an idea over what you can *see* in a given telescope just by looking at photos taken through that scope. Holding the shutter open and taking multiple shots with different filters definitely enhance the view.

 

[weeman]

I did not know that. I will try that next time <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><strong><font color="#ff0000">Techies: We do it in the dark. </font></strong></p><p><font color="#0000ff"><strong>"Put your hand on a stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with that special girl for an hour and it seems like a minute. That's relativity.</strong><strong>" -Albert Einstein </strong></font></p> </div>

 

[adrenalynn]

The filters are dependant upon what kind of camera you're shooting, and what the target is.<br /><br />My DSLR, for instance, doesn't respond well to near-IR (due to the daylight filter built over the sensor). Every non-astrophotography camera has this issue. You can have it modified for ~$600-700, but that creates daylight photography issues that then require filters and new whitebalance.<br /><br />Using traditional astrophotography filters in this case harms the image rather than improving it. Filtering should be applied in post-processing in this example.<br /><br />Dedicated CCD solutions like the SBIG and Yankee Robotics [drool!] are the answer - and basically require filtering.<br /><br />Even then, you have to look at what you're shooting. Emission nebula? Planetary nebula? Dark nebula? How much light pollution do you have, and what kind of pollution is it? Is the nebula in OII, OIII, H-Beta, UHC?<br /><br />Filters can also be a tremendous help or hinderance for visual observing.<br /><br />Have a look at this link for some great advice: http://pages.sbcglobal.net/raycash/filters.htm <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p>.</p><p><font size="3">bipartisan</font>  (<span style="color:blue" class="pointer"><span class="pron"><font face="Lucida Sans Unicode" size="2">bī-pär'tĭ-zən, -sən</font></span></span>) [Adj.]  Maintaining the ability to blame republications when your stimulus plan proves to be a devastating failure.</p><p><strong><font color="#ff0000"><font color="#ff0000">IMPE</font><font color="#c0c0c0">ACH</font> <font color="#0000ff"><font color="#c0c0c0">O</font>BAMA</font>!</font></strong></p> </div>

 

[commander_khashoggi]

Awesome, I'll keep this in mind....<img src="/images/icons/tongue.gif" /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p align="center"><font size="3"><font color="#339966">"<strong>If it's planned,</strong></font> <font color="#808080"><u>it's boring.</u>"</font><font color="#ff9900"> </font><font color="#ffcc33"><strong>- <em>Freddie Mercury</em></strong></font></font></p> </div>