Amateur Astronomer

Beehive Cluster by Bradford

April 16, 2008 on 3:41 pm | In Astrophotography |

I’ve put my personal attempts at astrophotography on hold for a while. My new telescope uses .965″ eyepieces, meaning the adapter I have for the Canon Rebel XTI won’t work. But I’m still playing with some of the online observatories I found last month. I’ve been a little surprised by the Bradford Robotic Telescope; I was under the impression that they had such a big backlog that it could take up to 6 months to get a picture, but I’ve gotten my first two in under a month. The first, a picture of the Orion Nebula, was overexposed to the point of being useless. I figure it was probably taken close to sunset given the time of year and low altitude of Orion in the sky right now. I’ve requested another picture with a shorter exposure time, but I’m figuring it’ll run into similar problems.

On the other hand, my second request turned out pretty well. It’s also overexposed, but not to same degree. You can take a look at it here. There’s a hair or a scratch on the lens which would probably annoy the heck out of me if I was actually paying for this. I’m giving this photo another try with a shorter exposure time and a neutral filter, so I’ll hope for the best and post it in the WPG2 folder when it comes in. Some time in May.