Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Milky Way in Cygnus

Dark dust clouds divide band of Milky Way in constellation of Cygnus (Northern Cross).
Below and slightly to the left to the brightest star of the constellation -- Deneb -- one can see an emission nebula “North America”, the shape of it closely resembles that of Earth continent.


An image is an average of 72 frames (12s each) taken by Canon EOS 600D (on tripod) with EF-S 18-55 mm f/3.5-5.6 IS II lens.
I emphasised bright stars of the constellation (they were processed separately and overlayed on the main image):



Processing: DeepSkyStacker, FITStacker, RawTherapee, GIMP.

The pictures above were captured from a bank of Nebrezh lake (Osokorky district, Kyiv):

**** UPDATED 27-08-2015 ****
The same picture, other treatment. This image is not cropped, you can see big distortions at the angles (probably because of a "field rotation"). Nevertheless Milky Way's dark nebulas are better seen in this image:

By nova.astrometry.net (size 65.6 x 40.7 deg):

Wednesday, August 12, 2015

A Meteor of Perseid Shower

It seems that weather tonight will be not favourable for observations because of clouds...
A pic beneath was captured in the night from 8th to 9th of August (Kyïv, Osokorky)
08-Aug-2015 ~23:28 EEST (UT+3)
Canon EOS 600D + EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS II; Exposure 20s; F=18mm; f/3.5; ISO 1600

****UPDATED****
Another treatment option

Sunday, August 9, 2015

Cluster Chi-H Persei

Night from 8th to 9th of August 2015
Canon EOS 600D on tripod (no tracking) + EF 50mm F/1.8; 60x5s; ISO 3200; F/2.5

Stars, Satellites and Meteors above a Tree

Night from 8th to 9th of August 2015
https://youtu.be/cP-6MXpR3mw

Here is a frame from the video (meteor from Perseid shower):



Thursday, August 6, 2015

Pass of International Space Station 05-Aug-2015

Pass of ISS 05-Aug-2015 (~22:47 EEST); view from Kyiv (Osokorky)

The picture is a composition of four 20-second frames made by Canon EOS 600D in serial shooting mode (with Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS II kit lens).

ISS moves from West to East (from left to right side of the picture).

For naked eye ISS looks like a very bright star moving quickly on the stars' background.


DeepSkyStacker program was used to compose individual frames into the final picture.

Here is a predicted ISS track from heavens-above.com.



After background subtraction (FITStacker)

Wednesday, August 5, 2015

Daytime Moon

Moon 4 Aug 2015 ~07:37 EEST (UT+3). Canon EOS 600D + EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS II

Tuesday, August 4, 2015

Pass of ISS

While shooting moonrise (02 Aug 2015) I noticed very bright "star" that was moving among other stars. I managed to shoot it (exposure time 4 seconds, so moving star looks as a track). Later I identified it as International Space Station (ISS).
The first picture is a track of ISS; the second one is a result of identification of stars by means of astrometry.net; the third picture is a calculated ISS track (heavens-above.com)


02-AUG-2015 ~22:14..22:15 EEST (UT+3); Kyiv, Osokorky, Nebrezh lake.