Welcome to the gallery section. In this section, we have posted some nice photos. These are some of the nicest photos that we had taken through the years.
I have started taking photos back in 1993. The first heavenly object was the moon. Why moon? Well, it is one of the easiest object around that you can capture on negatives. It's bright, big and can be seen almost everyday, although at different time, of course.
Most of these photos were quite out-dated. I have yet have time to upload new, improved quality photos. The photos were taken using minimum astrophotos equipment, ie, just a simply tripod, cable release and a camera, of course. I have just acquire a german equatorial mount and will use the mount to take photos with longer exposure duration.
So, do come back regularly.
We have just returned from annular
eclipse observation at Tanjung Sekakap, Mersing, Johor. Here's the full
report
Close conjuction between Venus/Jupiter/Moon
These images were taken in the morning of 23rd April
1998. On that day, Jupiter and Venus lies about 1/3 of a degree apart.
The Moon also located on the same part of the sky. The three object can
be seen in a field of view of a 7x50mm binocular.
This is a CCD image of the event. The brighter and higher
planet is Venus while Jupiter can be seen on the lower right. The
image at the bottom left, is the false image of the Moon created by the
camera lens and the image on the bottom right is actually a small part
of a cloud that drifts by at the time the image was taken.
The image of Jupiter taken on the same day.
Venus
Click to see the photos of the following objects:-
The
SunThe
Moon The
Planets The
Stars The
Comet
These images were taken during the total solar eclipse of 1995. Since I don't owned any telescope during that time, I used a 500mm Russian telephoto lens fitted with a mylar solar filter. This cause the first two images to be blue in colour. This filter cuts all the IR and UV light from entering the telescope while letting through 0.001% of the visible light.
At times, the sun disk may appeared featureless. But there are times when the sun surface is filled with dark spot distributed randomly across the disk. These are sunspots, an area appeared dark in colour, and have a lower temperature than it's surrounding.
This is how it looks like in the middle of a total solar
eclipse. I took this shot using my Nikon FM10 and 35mm lens.
**********************************
The planets are very difficult to photograph. You'll need to have a resonable size telescope mounted on an equatorial mount for trackking. High magnification is almost a must for photographing planets.
Photography at high magnification is never easy. You'll to have a very stable mount to avoid unnecessary vibrations. The target is also dim, thus the need for long exposure of at least 1sec to 10sec.
This is the reason why I only try planetary photography recently. I have just gotten myself an equatorial mount and some photography accessories to enable me to take the photographs of the planets.
**************************************
This is not the moon, it's Venus.
VENUS is the second planet from the Sun. It is also the nearest to the Earth. As it orbits around the Sun, it's apparent diameter changes drastically. It also stay closed to the Sun most of the time.
The above photo were taken years back using my 7inch homemade telescope. It was taken early in the morning (about 6am) when the angular diameter of the planet at the time about 50 arc sec.
Apart from it's constant changes in its phases, no other details are visible.
****************************************
This is the giant gas planet, Jupiter.
JUPITER, is the biggest planet in our solar system. It's diameter is 11 times bigger than the Earth!. Observing the planet, even at low magnification, reveals two dark bands, or oftenly call the belts of Jupiter.
Apart from the belts, you might notice up to four stars, near to the planet. These stars seems to align in the straight line. These "stars" are actually the moons of the planet. If you have the chance to observe the planets in a span of several hours, the moons will move from it's previous position.
The photo was taken using 4.5inch telescope with 3sec exposure.
*******************************************
SATURN
The most fasinating planet in our solar system. The ring could be seen even at low magnification in a small telescope.
This photo was taken using 4.5inch telescope with 5sec exposure.
THE STARS
THE MILKY WAY......this photo was taken during the major
blackout in 1996. This photo shows the direction to the center of our galaxy,
the Milky Way. You can see the Milky Way under a dark sky. It appears as
a band of light that stretched across the sky. The band of light actually
contains billions of stars, too tiny and close, preventing our eyes from
resolving them.
The photo above was taken with high speed film of 3200ASA which I bought from US for US$10. The exposure was 30sec with 50mm lens with F1.4 setting.
Can you identify some object that can be seen in the photo? Maybe the photo on the right can help you.
The photo has been converted to negative, that mean black becomes white and white becomes black.
The object with labelled starting with "M" is called the Messier Object. There are 110 such objects across the sky.
M6-butterfly clusters (because the arrangement of the stars is like butterfly)
M7-open star cluster
M8-Trifid Nebula
ORION
The Orion constellation is one of the most famous among 88 others. Most people recognize it by the three stars in a straight line.
However, the finest object in this constellation is M42 or also known as Orion Nebula. You can see it on the right of the three stars. It appears as red patch of light. Astronomer believed that this is a region where stars are born.
This photo was taken two or three years ago at a camp site, off Teluk Bahang, Penang. The exposure was 16sec with 400ASA film at F1.4 setting.
*I have since taken better picture of the Orion. I will upload it when I have the time.
ETA CARINA
This starfield was located in the south. The photo was
taken after I took some photos of Comet Hale-Bopp back in April 1997.
LARGE MAGELANIC CLOUD (LMC)
This object can be seen to the upper left hand side of
the photo. I took this in December 1997 from Gertak Sanggul, Penang. I
have used a 50mm lens, 800ASA film and exposure of about 2 mins.
These are the nomads of our Solar System. Travelling in highly elliptical orbits, these frozen chunks of dirty ice arrive from beyond the orbit of Neptune, swing close by the Sun, and then return to the farthest reaches of the Solar System from where they came. As a comet swings by the Sun, solar energy sublimates frozen gases and dust on its surface to created the comet'scoma, or head. Radiation pressure from the Sun and the solar wind combine to press against the coma's gas and dust, thus creating the comet's long tail.
Each year, a dozen or more comets either are discovered or reappear on schedule. Most are quite faint, but several may eventually become bright enough to be seen in amateur telescope and binoculars.
Brighter comets may also display ghostly tails extending behind the coma and opposite the Sun. The brightest comets have dual tails (one called the ion tail, the other called the dust tail).
Many may remembered seeing Comet West back in 1976. But recently, in 1996 Comet Hyakutake and in 1997, Comet Hale-Bopp put a grand display in our sky.
Here are a couple of comet photos
which I have taken.
COMET HYAKUTAKE
This comet was best seen in March 1996. I was in United States on work assignment when I took this photo. It is the brightest and the first comet I have seen visually. The tail can be seen about 25 or 30 degress from the coma. That's about 1/6 of the entire sky!. Some observers reported seeing the tail stretched over 50 degrees.
Since I was in US, I had to use my Nikon to photograph it. The widest F ratio my camera lense can achieve is about 3.5 which is quite bad for this kind of photography.
The film used is 1000ASA rating and exposure of 30sec.
***********************************************
COMET HALE-BOPP
This comet got the honour as the brightest comet of the century. I have taken this photo on 10th April 1997 from Balik Pulau, Penang.
These two photos are the same one. The top one is the positive, while for the bottom one, I have converts it to negative to show you the tails.
I have these photos and few others posted in the following homepage. It contains the largest photo archives on Comet Hale-Bopp.
http://galileo.ivv.nasa.gov/comet/lim3.html
http://galileo.ivv.nasa.gov/comet/lim6.html
Get your own Free Home Page
