Taking a Picture of THE ANDROMEDA GALAXY

it is a sunny Saturday here in the city but we are escaping to some darker skies we were going camping with Rudy mean Ashley and Rudy so it should be a great time and most importantly it is going to be clear tonight the forecast held true we booked this camping trip months ago and when you know what we lucked out okay now I got to decide what I'm bringing mm-hmm I'm thinking a wide field set up I am gonna bring a small telescope and then I'm also going to bring a very portable camera lens set up for some wide field imaging all this focus [Music] so how does this work I pack all the astronomy stuff you packed what we actually need for camping right everything else the thing I always kind of feel bad about go into a public campsite and bring my astrophotography here is that people will walk by the campsite and they see the telescope and they see the tripods and the cameras and they say okay can I look through your telescope and I have to tell them no you can't actually look through it you can look at me taking pictures but I don't have anything for you to see that benefit to using the rubber bin for your laptop also doubles as the perfect way to transport all your gear yes I am bringing my old haq5 I will have everything I need under this perfect portal class four skies the best spot for tripod legs this is really cool what you gotta see this so speaking of being prepared I'm bringing the eye out from Sky tracker to do some wide field camera lens work and it can be charged with the mini USB and just in case it's not fully charged enough I have this solar powered USB charger so this is another Amazon Jim it's got the solar panel on there even if it's somehow died it's fully charged now if it's somehow died from here to the campsite I can charge it with solar from there [Music] [Applause] [Music] are you excited Rudy so the place we're headed is a campground in southern Ontario it's right on the shore of Lake Erie I was actually there two years ago almost to the date that video where I shot the Andromeda galaxy that was at this park Rock Point Provincial Park we got a great campsite I actually have power this time but I'm gonna plug in my rig to take some deep sky Astro photos through telescope as well as some more mobile widefield stuff I might walk down to the beach with it I'm not sure yet but either way the forecast looks great I've got a chose a campsite with a lot of open sky which also means that there's not a lot of shade so we'll be kind of baking in the Sun all day but either way I'm really excited [Music] do not like guns I mean to get six hot dogs hot dog runs [Music] okay so there is a lot to unpack this is the spot here as you can see a nice opening to the east clear view to the north for Polaris so not so much but we're gonna be shooting something right up here here's a look at the campsite what do you think keep open okay so that's me on there right Ashley on the Left Rudy in the middle be nice to sleep on the same air mattress but look we all know that doesn't work clear outside up in case the weather had changed cuz sometimes it does but we're in luck still clear for tonight we took Rudy down to the beach he had a great swim he's a good fetcher found a nice stick for him and I just went to the park store to get some firewood two bags of firewood yeah it's just beautiful weather here at the park it really doesn't get any better than this and I'm just so excited for what's to come tonight when that Sun finally sets let's start the fire for me too [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] well it is 7:40 the Sun is setting if you haven't noticed already I've got two rigs set up here this is the primary imaging rig for tonight which is the Sky Watcher haq5 with the William optics zenith star 73 you've seen the scope a lot that's for sure with a DSLR camera attached the Canon 60d a so on this rig the plan is to shoot the Andromeda galaxy the entire galaxy will fit in with this telescope just fine and that's an object where you really need dark skies to do it justice because it is a broadband galaxy target so I can't use narrow band filters and cheat the way I do with nebula from home so a great target for a place like this and something I haven't shot since then so it's been about two years on the other rig I've got the sky guide er Pro the IAP Tron sky got her pro with my Canon t3i who modified and then the Rokinon 135 millimeter lens so that's a super wide field set up again shooting in broadband with that one the filters the opto long L probe I'm just taking advantage of the dark skies I have here and the target I'm not really sure because I can't really tell where I'm situated exactly I mean I can see the Sun setting the West so I know I'm looking pretty well north but I'm not sure what the obstructions are like I'd love to shoot something in the Milky Way wide field at 135 but it might end up being the heart and soul nebula in Cassiopeia because that's in the east and I know I'm gonna get that it's gonna rise nice and high so very excited to get started just needed to get dark [Music] okay I am up and running and I want you to tell me what I'm shooting okay let's see if she gets it okay so what are we looking at there what am I wrong what look at this one it's got blue and pink this one let me turn the auto stretch on hold on now you'll be able well watch oh yeah what is it now then I process this data yes what is it I don't remember I apologize for the strange lighting it's very dark out here but come with me I want to show you what I'm working on this is the sky gutter Pro and on this I'm shooting the veil nebula complex so the Cygnus loop I get the whole thing in on the 135 and there's a star cluster to the right of this this nebula region so that's in the frame as well and taking about 30 subs on that so far I'll put together an image there and on the other rig more even more exciting through the telescope we are shooting the andromeda galaxy and this has just recently framed up and I started Auto guiding on it actually it's still I just finished calibrating the auto grinding haven't even started shooting but the reason for that was because it was behind a tree but it's now high enough so I can start collecting some two minute images I think I'm shooting at ISO 800 but I'll determine those finally soon but that's what's going on here so these are the Rings set up in the dark I'm going to turn this off now first people are starting to wondering I just wanted to show you what I'm looking at on Astro photography tool through the laptop of the images I'm taking you up the andromeda galaxy being out here under these portal class-4 dark skies means collecting a lot more signal in a shorter period of time it's not that I'm collecting a lot more signal it's just a better signal-to-noise ratio per shot so much more so than than home.the the light emitted from my deep sky object is shining through and I'm not picking up nearly as much background sky glow from that light pollution from the city out here so if you can see the image on the screen there you can see the glow of the nucleus of the Andromeda galaxy but watch what happens when I press the auto stretch which is basically just like performing an aggressive curved stretch in Photoshop look at that the andromeda galaxy and its companions there like it is just massive and glorious and it's out there and it's real and these images are happening right now this is the last sub that was taken you know less than two minutes ago were 90 seconds into another one which will be the seventh frame I'll stack all these together into what should be just an incredible image through the telescope [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: AstroBackyard

Views: 1,738,013

Keywords: andromeda galaxy, astrophotography, telescope, camera, photography, astrobackyard, andromeda, galaxy, DSLR

Id: yu8WZfb4nGk

Length: 14min 5sec (845 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 28 2019