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andrea_g_amato_art OP t1_iy0pod9 wrote

So, a bit of background on this:

INFO ON THE EQUIPMENT:

  • I have always been passionate about astrophotography, but I couldn't afford a telescope nor an equatorial mount. I also live in one of the most light polluted areas in the world (Napoli, Italy), which discouraged me even more.

  • I still took pictures of a solar eclipse (left) by pointing my Nikon D7100 with a 105mm lens directly to the sun (Bad idea, I know!), and photographed the transit of Mercury a few years ago by projecting the sun on a sheet of paper using a binocular.

  • I took pictures of Jupiter and I could even distinguish its moons, and took really sad pics of Saturn and Mars, but my camera wasn't powerful enough.

  • Then, one day everything changed when my father decided to buy a Nikon P1000 for fun (which, although technically not a telescope, it has a super zoom) and he used it for birds and stuff like that. Once he got it I knew I had to test it with astrophotography! The first results were promising, but the quality wasn't great, and manually pointing at planets, manually focusing while the planet got out of frame was quite the task, but it paid off!

  • Still, I felt I was missing something. This is when I discovered the magic of stacking! I started taking long videos instead of photos, then through PIPP, Autostakkert and Registax I made progress.

ABOUT THE PICS:

  • The ISS was probably among the most difficult ones, since it was manually tracked (handheld) and focused while in-flight. It took several attempts to get a usable image.

  • Mercury was super annoying since it was very close to the Sun and almost impossible to find. I got it once, and I decided it was enough. Never again!

  • Venus took a long time, because I wanted to show all the different phases.

  • I have other cool composite pictures of the Moon, but I wanted to use plain ones in order to be 'fair'. The eclipse is from many years ago, before I got the super-zoom camera.

  • The only planet I was missing was Mars, because I was waiting for its closest approach (which is in a few days, but I won't be home to take pictures), and once I had it I decided to post the final collection here, hoping many other people will take pictures despite not having super expensive equipment!

  • Jupiter and Saturn are probably the easiest, although it's hard to find a night with good seeing conditions and no clouds! In the top pic you can see the red spot, which I didn't think I would be able to see with just a DSLR.

  • I only 'cheated' a bit with Uranus and Neptune, since I enlarged the pictures a bit for the final composite, which smoothed them, and I adjusted the color to match their proper one. Aside from these minor tweaks, everything else is 'fair'.

P.S. Apologies for the watermarks, I know they are annoying, but I had other works stolen in the past, and I poured years of work into this project, I hope you can understand, so I'm sorry for the inconvenience.

Have a wonderful day, and I hope I inspired you to take more photos! Space is amazing!!!

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Maidwell t1_iy0t762 wrote

Fantastic, inspiring work. Love the design of the final presentation too.

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usrdef t1_iy12q3p wrote

I wonder if we'll ever get commercial telescopes that are powerful enough to view Pluto like we can Mars, etc.

Would have to be one hell of a telescope.

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CraigAT t1_iy2mj0o wrote

I know technically Pluto doesn't need to be there but I didn't realise there would be a technical limit too.

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AtticMuse t1_iy3vw8u wrote

Considering this is what the early Hubble photos of Pluto looked like, yeah it would have to be one hell of a telescope indeed! Image from New Horizons probe as it passed Pluto on the right for comparison.

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ocient t1_iy7eb01 wrote

hubble wasn't designed to look at something like pluto, or even jupiter. its early jupiter pics werent as good as ground scopes either.

the math is pretty straightforward to figure out lens size and focal length in order to resolve pluto. maybe someone else here will do that math, since i am farrrrrr too lazy

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zeeblecroid t1_iy9m4xv wrote

Not without being enormous, unfortunately. The only solution to the diffraction limit is larger apertures.

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anyavailablebane t1_iy2tolm wrote

You haven’t done Pluto yet?

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Albert_VDS t1_iy3ef3n wrote

Why would you forget Ceres if you want to mention Pluto?

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smurficus103 t1_iy3jc5b wrote

Damn i looked up ceres and it was discovered in 1801, some 40 years prior to Neptune (1846) and rides an inclined orbit between mars and Jupiter

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ziostraccette t1_iy2snwc wrote

Ma Sta roba è incredibile! Mai avrei immaginato di poter vedere foto fatte cosi senza telescopio!

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txmb_ t1_iy374kw wrote

As someone also limited by the sheer cost of equipment, this has given me a lot of confidence to keep at it with my DSLR and fixed tripod.

These pictures are stunning! The main thing holding me back is lacking a lens with zoom. The one I have for my Canon EOS 4000D zooms out bht not in. Great for day-to-day landscape snapping and ad-lip photography, but less so for astrophotography haha.

I do plan on investing in a zooming lens primarily, and an equatorial mount secondly to take that astrophotography to the next level, but haave still questioned how worthwhile such a huge investment would be. Seeing these settles it though, it'll definitely be worth it!

Hope you keep up your photographical adventures!

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post_traumatico t1_iy36d7x wrote

Madooooooonna che figata. Il tuo lavoro è una vera ispirazione, continua così!

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LiftedCorn t1_iy3lp97 wrote

I can't even get a good frame filling photo of moon with my 300mm lens, and you got this pics at 105 mm ??

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andrea_g_amato_art OP t1_iy3mg2c wrote

No, I got the sun and other old pics at 105mm at first, then with the P1000 we are talking ~3000mm (so, while technically not a telescope in the traditional sense, it can take decent photos!)

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