My Astronomy Hobby
One of my favorite hobbies is astronomy. I own two telescopes that I use to observe and photograph the sun (with a sun filter), moon, planets, and some of the brighter deep sky objects from my driveway, despite the light pollution here in Woodbury, Minnesota.
I try to take many photos of each planet, choose the best among those, and then use software to combine those photos into a single higher quality result. This reduces noise and brings out more detail in the image. These photos of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn are typical of what you would see through my telescope at about 240x magnification.
One of my favorite hobbies is astronomy. I own two telescopes that I use to observe and photograph the sun (with a sun filter), moon, planets, and some of the brighter deep sky objects from my driveway, despite the light pollution here in Woodbury, Minnesota.
I try to take many photos of each planet, choose the best among those, and then use software to combine those photos into a single higher quality result. This reduces noise and brings out more detail in the image. These photos of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn are typical of what you would see through my telescope at about 240x magnification.
The sun is easy to photograph, although there is not nearly as much detail as with the moon. The photo on the left is the result of combining two photos of 1/1000 secs at 75x magnification taken using a solar filter. Many nice sunspots are visible. The moon is also easy to photograph. The photo on the right is a single exposure of 1 second at 48x magnification, taken during a lunar eclipse.
Some astronomical phenomena do not even require a telescope. The northern lights are not usually visible from cities or suburbs, but there are exceptions. On March 23, 2023, the northern lights were bright enough to be visible from my suburban location. The photograph below was taken with my iPhone. It is a 1/2 second exposure.