# Recent moon image



## Aloicious

Got a good shot of the moon last night, processed it a couple different ways. it was actually shot just prior to full sun setting, so there is a blue cast on the lower portion of it, but this is a 'normal' processing of it:






the harsh sidelighting brought out some nice detail, so I re-processed it to bring out as much surface detail as I could. it doesn't look like it would just looking at it, but all the details are interesting to examine.


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## Aloicious

well, apparently they're getting auto-resized. they're normally 1200px on the long side, but the post is scaling them down to 800...
if you want to look at the 1200px ones, here's links to them...
normal:
http://i461.photobucket.com/albums/qq337/guitargeek1968/astrophotography/moon-5-29-12_0001.jpg
details:
http://i461.photobucket.com/albums/qq337/guitargeek1968/astrophotography/moon-5-29-12.jpg


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## 412 Burgh

which lens was used?


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## Aloicious

my 8" ritchey-Chretien 1600mm f8 telescope and D800:


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## jfrabat

So... that's a pretty big lens then, huh?


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## 412 Burgh

Aloicious said:


> my 8" ritchey-Chretien 1600mm f8 telescope and D800:



ummm...that's crazy cool


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## echoyjeff222

great detail, but for some reason it seems abruptly cut off ... not sure if it's because of the post processing or what but it's a really harsh line b/w the moon and the blackness.


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## Aloicious

jfrabat said:


> So... that's a pretty big lens then, huh?



heh yeah, it's pretty large, but that kind of telescope is a lot more compact than my other one which is the same diameter (8"), but it's a newtonian type, so it's like ~4.5 feet long.



412 Burgh said:


> ummm...that's crazy cool


 
Thanks, astrophotography extremely difficult, I'm still learning, but it's a blast



echoyjeff222 said:


> great detail, but for some reason it seems abruptly cut off ... not sure if it's because of the post processing or what but it's a really harsh line b/w the moon and the blackness.



that's pretty normal, I think it was only roughly 60% full that night, the edge of the light is normally pretty harsh, especially when it's side lit like that. you can see the small highlights right on the border of the light/dark area which are edges of craters and other surface anomalies.


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## 480sparky

I should get Phoebe out more often this summer.


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## prodigy2k7

Why is the top of the moon so soft?

Cool photo though.


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## 480sparky

prodigy2k7 said:


> Why is the top of the moon so soft?
> 
> Cool photo though.



Might have been turbulence in the air.  Not only do telescopes magnify the subject, they also magnify the 'boiling' effect of all the atmosphere 'twixt the camera & the edge of space.


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## Trever1t

wild. There's so many sub-sects of photography it's unfathomable. Nice rig, great detail! I'd love to see some deep space shots yo manage with that telescope and D800!


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## Aloicious

Trever1t said:


> wild. There's so many sub-sects of photography it's unfathomable. Nice rig, great detail! I'd love to see some deep space shots yo manage with that telescope and D800!



yeah, I'm trying to work on some tracking/guiding issues I'm having with the scope mount right now, but soon I'll try to shoot some deep space objects. I live really close to some very dark sky areas so it should be pretty good, I'm also working on building a fast imaging scope (~500mm focal length around f3.2ish) that will help out with stuff like that too.



480sparky said:


> prodigy2k7 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Why is the top of the moon so soft?
> 
> Cool photo though.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Might have been turbulence in the air.  Not only do telescopes magnify the subject, they also magnify the 'boiling' effect of all the atmosphere 'twixt the camera & the edge of space.
Click to expand...


bingo, I was out in a desert and this image was taken just after sunset before the sky was fully dark, so it was still pretty warm and starting to cool down. so the temperature differences (among other things) through the atmosphere give different refractive indexes and are magnified by the telescope, and the closer to the horizon you get, the more atmosphere you have to shoot though, which causes more problems, this was probably 40 degrees above the horizon or so.

Sparky, is that celestron a 9.25" SCT? it seems larger than the 8" scopes I'm used to in comparison with the camera body.


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## Ernicus

I'm jealous.  I'd love to see some shots of Jupiter.  I was able to see it once on and old telescope I had...barely made out saturn...looked more like a start with a ring...but I saw it.  Took me like 2 hours to find it.  lol


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## Aloicious

planetary imaging is usually best done through video then stacking the individual frames, I really want to try it out with the D800 video settings, it should do pretty well. once I get the tracing setup more accurately, I'm for sure going to try it out.

in fact I'm a member of the local astronomical society, and we have a observatory that the club owns which is pretty close to me, and they have a huge 32" diameter reflector scope that I want to hook the camera up to...in astronomy world, the larger the diameter of the mirror/cell, the more desireable since they can take in and focus more light and make fainter things brighter to the eye, and camera. I'd love to get some DSOs and planetary shots with that...


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## Ernicus

Cool stuff. I look forward to seeing what you can do.


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## TCampbell

VERY NICE!  

I recognized the image the moment I saw it because I _also_ took a photo of the moon last night and I noticed the Copernicus crater just at the edge of the lunar terminator (it's the crater roughly in the middle of the moon just at the edge of the day/night sides) -- so I knew your photo had to be taken the same night as mine.





This one was taken through a Meade 80mm f/6 ED Triplet Apochromatic Refractor using a Canon 60Da (ISO 100, 1/60th sec.)  

I had hoped to shoot some faint-fuzzys but the "seeing" wasn't too good, so I decided to go for a subject that I knew would be a bit more cooperative.


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## Aloicious

> Cool stuff. I look forward to seeing what you can do.



I've done some wide angle stuff and solar imaging before, but haven't got much in the way of DSO's or faint objects...here's some older posts with some of my earlier stuff, some is better than others, its a really difficult area of photography, but very rewarding when done well, I'm still a newb when it comes to astro imaging, but I'm learning:

recent solar eclipse shots: http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/general-gallery/285026-ring-fire-solar-eclipse.html

wide angle star trails: http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/landscape-cityscape/285027-star-trails-middle-nowhere.html

Milky way and Antares pics: http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/...6-new-milky-way-antares-astrophotography.html

old moon images with previous equipment when I was just starting to learn astrophotography: http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/...hooting-moon-my-attempt-astrophotography.html


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## LizardKing

Man, you're my new hero jajajaja... I mean, at first you depressed me... Cause just about an hour ago I took a photo of the moon I was really proud of... And now it's like a 50kb GIF in comparison to this jajaja
But then I saw the equipment you used and everything was nice again jaja... You're playing on a different league :thumbup:

Gear put aside, I think you did a really amazing job here. Both the shot and processing are great. I can honestly say it's the best picture of the moon I've seen jaja
I prefer the first edit, by the way... Although I'd probably desaturate it like you did with the second one, to get rid of that cast... but it's kinda nice anyway... some yellows/oranges at the top and blues at the bottom.

Thanks for showing this and in such quality!

Regards,
*LizardKing

*edit: here's my humble image, by the way


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## Aloicious

TCampbell said:


> VERY NICE!
> 
> I recognized the image the moment I saw it because I _also_ took a photo of the moon last night and I noticed the Copernicus crater just at the edge of the lunar terminator (it's the crater roughly in the middle of the moon just at the edge of the day/night sides) -- so I knew your photo had to be taken the same night as mine.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This one was taken through a Meade 80mm f/6 ED Triplet Apochromatic Refractor using a Canon 60Da (ISO 100, 1/60th sec.)
> 
> I had hoped to shoot some faint-fuzzys but the "seeing" wasn't too good, so I decided to go for a subject that I knew would be a bit more cooperative.



thats a great shot. I've got a orion short tube 80mm which I use as a guidescope, but I've been having trouble with it recently, I need to do some investigating. I was also hoping to get some faint-fuzzies too, but got frustrated when it wouldn't guide correctly. 

I like the image, the coloring looks interesting. what area of MI were you in when you shot it? (I used to live in Lansing, and Grand Rapids), is that coloring from post processing, or is that smog related?


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## Aloicious

LizardKing said:


> Man, you're my new hero jajajaja... I mean, at first you depressed me... Cause just about an hour ago I took a photo of the moon I was really proud of... And now it's like a 50kb GIF in comparison to this jajaja
> But then I saw the equipment you used and everything was nice again jaja... You're playing on a different league :thumbup:
> 
> Gear put aside, I think you did a really amazing job here. Both the shot and processing are great. I can honestly say it's the best picture of the moon I've seen jaja
> I prefer the first edit, by the way... Although I'd probably desaturate it like you did with the second one, to get rid of that cast... but it's kinda nice anyway... some yellows/oranges at the top and blues at the bottom.
> 
> Thanks for showing this and in such quality!
> 
> Regards,
> *LizardKing
> 
> *edit: here's my humble image, by the way



thats a pretty good image, I'm guessing that was with the 28-300, right? you got a good exposure from it, the fine details on the surface really require a telescope to resolve so don't feel too bad. it's better than my first attempts at shooting the moon.

yeah I'm with you on the desaturation, that blue cast kinda bothers me.


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## LizardKing

Yeap, the 28-300... Tried to do my best to focus on live view, but it's a little soft in some parts... Anyway, maybe tomorrow I'll do better jaja... That's the good thing about shooting the moon


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## LizardKing

BTW... In one of the links you pasted, you say you stacked 8-9 images... may I ask what kind of stacking you did? 
I'm really trying to get better pictures of the moon everytime I have a nice clear sky, so I'm always looking for tips and ideas on this matter... And the one I uploaded before is actually the result of 2 different shots... But I was just playing to try and get a better outcome jaja 
Thanks in advance!


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## TCampbell

Aloicious said:


> I like the image, the coloring looks interesting. what area of MI were you in when you shot it? (I used to live in Lansing, and Grand Rapids), is that coloring from post processing, or is that smog related?



I'm near Detroit -- this image was taken in Lincoln Park (Hector J Robinson Observatory).  The light pollution from the city is miserable here, but I didn't do any color adjustments (just levels, highlights and sharpening.)   The 60Da is the astrophotography edition of the Canon 60D.  They replace the standard IR/UV filter with a different filter that allows significantly more light to pass in the IR (about 3x more than the filter in a normal DSLR.)  Since IR penetrates better, it makes the camera much more sensitive -- you can take shorter exposures and get more detail (which is what convinced me to buy it.  Since the camera doesn't have the normal UV/IR filter found in most DSLRs and is significantly more sensitive in IR, the colors come through a bit different.  It's normal for this type of camera.  I could have tweaked the colors around, but chose to leave it alone.  I've only had this camera for a week and have been too busy to use it much -- so I've only taken a handful of images with it.  

Several members of my club own the camera already.  I took a photo through a Meade 8" RC scope of M51 just a day or two after another club member imaged it with his 60Da through the same scope.  I was really impressed with their image -- considering it was just a DSLR and not a $5k cooled imaging sensor from someone like SBIG, Finger Lakes, Apogee, etc.  My 5D II took a much longer exposure and didn't capture nearly as much detail as the 60Da.  After seeing enough shots, I knew I wanted a DSLR for astrophotography. 

You can modify your own DSLR (for some reason, Canon Rebel bodies are VERY popular for this -- the Gary Honis website has detailed instructions on how to modify the camera (for the brave) and a service that lets you mail in your camera he'll do it for you (for the cowards... like me.)  Regardless of whether you do it or he does it -- it does void your warranty (of course.)  The 60Da basically lets you have a "modified" DSLR for astrophotography *except* that since it comes from Canon this way, the warranty is intact.

If you try to use it as a normal camera, you get off-normal color balance.  But you can buy a filter from Astronomik (they call it the "OWB" filter -- for "original white balance").  It snaps into the camera housing behind the lens so you don't have to buy thread-on filters for every size lens you own.


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## Carny

is jaja ha ha in spanish or portugese or somehting


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## LizardKing

Carny said:


> is jaja ha ha in spanish or portugese or somehting


I honestly don't know how to answer that... was thinking for a clever answer but it's kinda late and the brain is asking for a good night sleep... what do you mean really?


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## 480sparky

Aloicious said:


> Sparky, is that celestron a 9.25" SCT? it seems larger than the 8" scopes I'm used to in comparison with the camera body.



11".


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## Aloicious

LizardKing said:


> BTW... In one of the links you pasted, you say you stacked 8-9 images... may I ask what kind of stacking you did?
> I'm really trying to get better pictures of the moon everytime I have a nice clear sky, so I'm always looking for tips and ideas on this matter... And the one I uploaded before is actually the result of 2 different shots... But I was just playing to try and get a better outcome jaja
> Thanks in advance!



you don't need to worry about stacking with the moon, basically stacking for astro images combines the light from the exposures to get a rough equivalent of a single long exposure. for example, you could take a single exposure lasting 3 hours, but it would be VERY difficult to keep everything tight and tracked for that long on a single exposure, where you could do 36 5 minute exposures, and have a much better ability to keep everything sharp and tracked well, and then stack them together to combine the light from them all together to get roughly the same total exposure....there are some programs that are made to do the stacking, like registax, is one, as well as others, I think for those images you're talking about I just used photoshop CS4, which is okay, but since it's not made to be an astrophotography tool to start with, there are some others out there that are a bit better.

but since the moon is bright enough to capture a proper exposure in a much more normal speed, that kind of stacking isn't really needed. 



TCampbell said:


> Aloicious said:
> 
> 
> 
> I like the image, the coloring looks interesting. what area of MI were you in when you shot it? (I used to live in Lansing, and Grand Rapids), is that coloring from post processing, or is that smog related?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I'm near Detroit -- this image was taken in Lincoln Park (Hector J Robinson Observatory).  The light pollution from the city is miserable here, but I didn't do any color adjustments (just levels, highlights and sharpening.)   The 60Da is the astrophotography edition of the Canon 60D.  They replace the standard IR/UV filter with a different filter that allows significantly more light to pass in the IR (about 3x more than the filter in a normal DSLR.)  Since IR penetrates better, it makes the camera much more sensitive -- you can take shorter exposures and get more detail (which is what convinced me to buy it.  Since the camera doesn't have the normal UV/IR filter found in most DSLRs and is significantly more sensitive in IR, the colors come through a bit different.  It's normal for this type of camera.  I could have tweaked the colors around, but chose to leave it alone.  I've only had this camera for a week and have been too busy to use it much -- so I've only taken a handful of images with it.
> 
> Several members of my club own the camera already.  I took a photo through a Meade 8" RC scope of M51 just a day or two after another club member imaged it with his 60Da through the same scope.  I was really impressed with their image -- considering it was just a DSLR and not a $5k cooled imaging sensor from someone like SBIG, Finger Lakes, Apogee, etc.  My 5D II took a much longer exposure and didn't capture nearly as much detail as the 60Da.  After seeing enough shots, I knew I wanted a DSLR for astrophotography.
> 
> You can modify your own DSLR (for some reason, Canon Rebel bodies are VERY popular for this -- the Gary Honis website has detailed instructions on how to modify the camera (for the brave) and a service that lets you mail in your camera he'll do it for you (for the cowards... like me.)  Regardless of whether you do it or he does it -- it does void your warranty (of course.)  The 60Da basically lets you have a "modified" DSLR for astrophotography *except* that since it comes from Canon this way, the warranty is intact.
> 
> If you try to use it as a normal camera, you get off-normal color balance.  But you can buy a filter from Astronomik (they call it the "OWB" filter -- for "original white balance").  It snaps into the camera housing behind the lens so you don't have to buy thread-on filters for every size lens you own.
Click to expand...


yeah, I've read about the 60da, it sounds pretty nice, I got an olympus E510 for practically nothing that I've been experimenting with, I removed the cut IR filter completely and use a 2" Baader one at the end of the scope adapter instead which allows alot more of the hydrogen alpha wavelengths through. but I haven't had much chance to try it out much, I don't even have an olympus lens to test it with, only the scope adapter. If I ever win the lottery or something I'd like to get a D800 or D800e modified for astrophotography, but since I use both my bodies for business and other 'normal' photography hobbies, I can't really dedicate one to JUST AP. or even just get a 60da or something, but it'd be nice to have something compatable with all my nikon gear I already own...


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## Aloicious

480sparky said:


> Aloicious said:
> 
> 
> 
> Sparky, is that celestron a 9.25" SCT? it seems larger than the 8" scopes I'm used to in comparison with the camera body.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 11".
Click to expand...


ah, very nice!


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## LizardKing

Aloicious said:


> LizardKing said:
> 
> 
> 
> BTW... In one of the links you pasted, you say you stacked 8-9 images... may I ask what kind of stacking you did?
> I'm really trying to get better pictures of the moon everytime I have a nice clear sky, so I'm always looking for tips and ideas on this matter... And the one I uploaded before is actually the result of 2 different shots... But I was just playing to try and get a better outcome jaja
> Thanks in advance!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> you don't need to worry about stacking with the moon, basically stacking for astro images combines the light from the exposures to get a rough equivalent of a single long exposure. for example, you could take a single exposure lasting 3 hours, but it would be VERY difficult to keep everything tight and tracked for that long on a single exposure, where you could do 36 5 minute exposures, and have a much better ability to keep everything sharp and tracked well, and then stack them together to combine the light from them all together to get roughly the same total exposure....there are some programs that are made to do the stacking, like registax, is one, as well as others, I think for those images you're talking about I just used photoshop CS4, which is okay, but since it's not made to be an astrophotography tool to start with, there are some others out there that are a bit better.
> 
> but since the moon is bright enough to capture a proper exposure in a much more normal speed, that kind of stacking isn't really needed.
Click to expand...


Oh ok, yes, I've read a little about astrophotography. But in this case I thought maybe the stacking worked well for the perfect focus I see in your image. 
I've come to the point of manually focusing to the craters with live view, just a tad before infinity... But now it seems that's softening the surface and other parts of the moon...


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## Aloicious

yeah, live view is what I used for my focus, just zoom in as far as you can in live view and fine tune the focus as best you are able to...many scopes have multi speed focusers on them to help with fine tuning it which is an advantage in this area over a normal lens. the focus stacking you mentioned would be pretty hard to get mainly because the atmospheric refraction differences aren't something that can really be planned for to do focus stacking the same way you would with something like macro shots.

also remember that your shooting through the entire atmosphere, and various conditions will make getting (and keeping) focus sharp across the entire moon surface harder than normal, and increasingly difficult with longer focal lengths...the night I got the image in this post, I took probably 50 images of the moon with different settings/etc, and because of atmospheric conditions, and other things, this one was the sharpest of the bunch, not to mention that with the large amount of MP from the D800, I can crop down and still have a large image to downsize, so my image isn't close to being a 100% crop.


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## Aloicious

also, just FYI, I used the D800 tethered to my laptop for control and image capturing with Nikon's camera control pro 2, so when I say I used live view, I was viewing it on the laptop screen, so that also helps out with focusing alot when it's on a much larger screen vs the one on the camera.


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## Solarflare

Trever1t said:


> [...] I'd love to see some deep space shots yo manage with that telescope and D800!


 Hmm. I'm fairly sure that professional Astronomers exclusively use high performance CCD sensors, not consumer cameras with Beyer sensors - which by very definition throw 2/3 of the light falling on them away and apply all sorts of algorithms to get a more "beautiful" result.


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## Aloicious

Solarflare said:


> Trever1t said:
> 
> 
> 
> [...] I'd love to see some deep space shots yo manage with that telescope and D800!
> 
> 
> 
> Hmm. I'm fairly sure that professional Astronomers exclusively use high performance CCD sensors, not consumer cameras with Beyer sensors - which by very definition throw 2/3 of the light falling on them away and apply all sorts of algorithms to get a more "beautiful" result.
Click to expand...


 :scratch: umm...I'm not sure what you're problem is, or if you just have difficulty reading, but no one said anything about anyone here being a "professional" astronomer, and trever1t only said that seeing some DSOs would be interesting...in fact no one claimed that any 'pro' would use a DSLR in the first place...perhaps if you want to start a debate about 'professional' astronomer equipment, go start your own debate thread, and I'll go over there and explain to you in detail why your post here is useless, and riddled with flaws, assumptions, and misinformation. but thats not what THIS thread is for. so unless you have something useful to add to the discussion with us hobbiest astrophotograhers who are trying to improve ourselves in the hobby with the equipment we have access to, GTFO.


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## LizardKing

Thanks for all the tips and detailed explanation, Aloicious. I really appreciate it. I know what you mean about the troubles of properly doing focus stacking, but it's free to give it a shot on a clear night and see how it goes. 
I'll keep on trying and improving my moonshots... and I think I'll give it a try to the Nikon Control Pro 2 software.


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## Aloicious

LizardKing said:


> Thanks for all the tips and detailed explanation, Aloicious. I really appreciate it. I know what you mean about the troubles of properly doing focus stacking, but it's free to give it a shot on a clear night and see how it goes.
> I'll keep on trying and improving my moonshots... and I think I'll give it a try to the Nikon Control Pro 2 software.



No problem, glad to help out....for sure, give it a shot, if it works out, post up your results, I might have to give it a shot too. 

the control software is pretty good, but it's kindof expensive IMO, I think they have a 60 day trial with it or something though so give it a try, it'll probably help out with the focusing...


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## 480sparky

Solarflare said:


> Trever1t said:
> 
> 
> 
> [...] I'd love to see some deep space shots yo manage with that telescope and D800!
> 
> 
> 
> Hmm. I'm fairly sure that professional Astronomers exclusively use high performance CCD sensors, not consumer cameras with Beyer sensors - which by very definition throw 2/3 of the light falling on them away and apply all sorts of algorithms to get a more "beautiful" result.
Click to expand...


They typically use gizmos from places like SBIG.


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## Aloicious

480sparky said:


> They typically use gizmos from places like SBIG.



yeah, SBIGs are nice, but I'd still consider them high end consumer/semi-pro type gear. I'd dig a good cooled monochrome CCD imager with some high end narrowband filters, but I doubt that'll ever happen.

on a side note, since the subject of 'professional' was brought up, it probably should have a short explaination IMO for others who happen to come across this thread looking for information in the future. a "professional astronomer", as it was put, as in someone who makes a living with astronomy, isn't going to be making their money from selling their images, they're using the imaging for various other purposes such as research. and will likely be using a very high dollar custom built and designed imaging setup, likely geared specifically to perform for a single purpose, and would be attaching it to a private (and insanely expensive) observatory scope, or satellite scope. Obviously this isn't an astronomy forum, its a photography forum, so it stands to reason that as photographers, we'd be using our photography gear in an ameatur astronomy capacity, no one here ever claimed to be a professional astronomer.


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## Overread

Your photo has been nominated for Photo of the Month
http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/...may-2012-photo-month-nomination-thread-4.html


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## Aloicious

Overread said:


> Your photo has been nominated for Photo of the Month
> http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/...may-2012-photo-month-nomination-thread-4.html



Righteous! I forgot the POTM's were still happening.


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## Aloicious

Thanks Amandarine!


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## JoBoSlow

I like the top image a little better. Some of the darker details are more visible.


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## arwena

Hi TCampbell,

Canon 60Da seems very interesting to me because I like stars and the sky.
Since I'm new to this, I have a few questions if you can help me answer.

1.  What lens would you recommend for the camera?
2.  Can you shoot photos of the beach at night or evening city scenes?
3.  Can I shoot all sorts of night scenes other than the astrophotography?

Thank you,
arwena


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## arwena

I use Canon SX40.


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