CCD vs Film? Lots of time vs no patience? Alright, this is your place to discuss all the astrophotography what's and what's not. You can discuss about techniques, accessories, cameras, whatever....just make sure you also post some nice photos here too!
I am always after transient targets -- like now the Mars is traversing the Lagoon nebuli complex. After missing a couple of predawn morning skies (cloudy then), I went down to a new location this early morning to see if I had a better luck today.
Yes! Despite the presence of slight mist/thin clouds in the low eastern sky, and the Mars climbed to merely 14deg altitude at the time I started collecting data, the objects are all visible in each single 30s exposure. Here is the stacked and post-processed image.
There are three prominent (bright and large) deep-sky objects in Centaurus: NGC5139 (Omega Centauri), NGC5128, NGC4945. The latter two are large galaxies: especially, NGC5128 (Centaurus A) is probably the closest active galaxy to earth. NGC5139 is the largest globular cluster of the Milky Way, yet it is speculated it is the remnant core of a dwarf galaxy engulfed by the Milky Way. So in that sense, all three are galaxies.
I long for capturing all three in the same image. And this morning's clear sky gave me a chance.
A revisit to the Carina-Crux section of the Milky Way, which always fascinates me. It is quite far south and never reaches a high altitude in Singapore skies.
Shooting night scapes in the pre-dawn hours. Still work in process to get some wide angle southern Millky Way data processed. In the meanwhile, non-deep photos became more favorable for quick processing.
The first sight of the moon after the new moon phase -- its first appearance in the year of the Tiger. It also meets with Jupiter today -- the 1st and 3rd brightest objects next to the sun will not show together next month because the King of the planets will be having its close conjunction with the sun.
Will hopefully capture the bright duo in the pre-dawn morning sky near the end of March.
