> A dream come true
Nowadays we are so into the globalization and technologies, that I can submit observation plan to a remote, professional observatory at the other part of the word!
Yes I can image the southern sky with a "telescope hosting" at Chile. This country is astronomer's dream as we have there mountain and desert with perfect dark sky and seeing conditions. I recently use El Sauce observatory trough telescope.live.
It was challenging and exiting to plan observation at souther hemisphere and then process real professional data in FITS format (by the way I do not like it as it is hard to
extract all the dynamic range from it. There is not so much good software that reads it).
The target I submited is very special for me. It is the minor planet Gabrovo (2206 Gabrova), named to my home town and discovered in 1976 by Nikolay Chernih.
I actually try to shoot it with my telescope but failed to recognise it (it turns out later that it was actually on the image), so I use the 60cm RC telescope of El Sauce observatory.
This a great step towards my scientific explorations. Thank you Galactic Hunter for letting me know for this platform :)
Here is Galactic Hunter youtube channel
Red more on page 18 of Amateur Astrophotography magazine
And here it is the first digital image of 2206 Gabrova
Astrotracer is a great way to take advantage of the Pentax DSLR camera in-body shake reduction mechanism. It is available since Pentax k5 and track celestial bodies by moving the sensor. Here is what is it ablout:
Staying at my home inspires me to make some documentation of my experience. I got a dedicated drive for my astrophotos and start reorganize them by objects. Here is an article of the most recent process I use on my photos. Enjoy: )
For a few months from now Betelgeuse (Alpha Orion) dim so much, that it looks as bright as the stars in the Orion belt. This is not so disturbing and does not mean that cataclysmic events are happening with it.
For my last trip to the Rodopa mountain I decided to cross the limits and to target an object that is hard to believe that a non-professional equipment could catch.
While cleaning up my PC I found sequences of shots of Virgo galaxy cluster taken during springs of the last 2 years. Those were attempts to shot this object, but I was not satisfied with the result and left them.
