Wide angle photo of Lagoon Nebula and friends in center of our Milky Way. Taken with Nikon D7000 and Nikkor 24-85mm F2.8-F4 at 24mm F4.
Read More24mm wide field of Lagoon Nebula in our Milky Way
Astrophotos
M63 – The Sunflower galaxy
M63 – Introduction During my last astrotrip I focussed on testing out my new Nikon D600, trying to capture the tidal tail of the Leo Triplet and capturing the integrated flux nebula in M81 and M82. At the end of the last night I had one of these moments that you stand next to your scope and think; time to shoot something else, what can I capture? So in a real ad-hoc decision I thought…
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M81 and M82 with a dslr – trying to capture integrated flux nebula
M81 and M82 – introduction M81 together with M82 is probably one of the most popular galaxies both visually and as imaging object. Everyone starting out with this hobby will have a go at these galaxies in Ursa Major and rightfully so I would say. They are big, lot’s of detail and easy to find. For most camera’s the two galaxies form a very nice composition and field-of-view. This fov has more to offer than…
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Leo Triplet with a DSLR – The hunt for the Tidal Tail
Last weekend I was on an astrotrip to a nice spot in Germany with nice dark skies. The main goal of the weekend was to test all my new equipment and to see if imaging with the duo setup would work properly with the Lacerta MGEN controlling two camera’s. As a subject I chose the beautiful Leo Triplet, which is one of my favourite galaxy ‘groups. The three galaxies all show much detail and are…
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Aurora photography from the Netherlands
Yesterday we actually got the chance to witness the aurora from my ‘regular dark spot’ near my hometown, which is located at 52 degrees north. Pretty rare to be able to see and capture the northern lights from this location! The light pollution from the towns and cities did make it harder to witness the aurora, but I think it actually made a pretty colourful picture with the bright orange glow 😉 It was also…
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Comet LoveJoy and the Pleiades
INTRODUCTION It had been almost a full year since I last went out for some astrophotography, other than the trips to La Palma and Hohen Woos (Germany). Finally the circumstances looked to be good to capture the comet LoveJoy, that was making a spectacular show passing by the Pleiades. Clouds were coming in, but I was able to capture 40 frames of 2 minutes each which allowed me to capture the comet’s impressive tail. Photographing…
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North America Nebula at 200mm with DSLR and Astrotrac
Introduction The North America Nebula in the constellation Cygnus is probably one of the most popular widefield subjects of the northern hemisphere. This beautiful field of view contains a very large emission nebula for which it’s shape resembles that of the continent of North America. Photographing the North America Nebula with unmodified Nikon D7000 I was very curious to see how much h-alpha my unmodified Nikon D7000 would capture when photographing this emission nebula. I…
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Comet PanSTARRS C/2011 L4 with DSLR
Introduction C/2011 L4 (PANSTARRS) is a non-periodic comet discovered in June 2011 that became visible to the naked eye when it was near perihelion in March 2013. It was the first comet I saw after getting started with astronomy and astrophotography so I was quite excited about this one. After having seen it a view times with my binoculars I finally had the chance to photograph it during an astro-trip to Hohen Woos in Germany….
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NGC 4216 and friends – galaxy composite image
Previously I shared the image I took of NGC 4216 and friends here. I absolutely love this field of view in the constellation of Virgo with it’s many galaxies. You can endlessly look at this image and keep discovering new ‘faint fuzzies’ in there. I decided to create a composite image consisting of the most obvious galaxies in this image. The image ended up with over 100 galaxies, and still more can be seen in…
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Antennae Galaxies – NGC 4038 and NGC 4039
Introduction I had high hopes up front about this subject. I just find it very beautiful and never quite understood why it got a nickname like the ‘antennae galaxies’, instead of something referring to the heart shape of the interacting galaxies. To me I just see a heart in the sky consisting of 2 entities ‘colliding’ with each other. It’s hard not to see the symbolic meaning this can obviously have. It was the first…
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