If you look back at my previous blogs, you will see that I absolutely love the night sky. I love being out under the stars looking at the wonders out there, makes me feel humble and in awe at the same time.
I was given a telescope from one of my old school teachers, this was a few years ago, I don't have a tracker for this, but I do love it for visual astronomy.
I did connect my camera to it for some photography, although it's never been as sharp as I'd like with my Sony A7iii connected, and I've been looking for other scopes/lenses for the job.
Anyhow, I was on Ali Express and saw some planetary cameras being sold much cheaper than I could get in the UK, initially I ordered the SVBony SV105 camera, I've only tested it out once, so I need to get it on the scope again but it was only 2 mega pixels (if I remember), a few weeks later, I found the SVBony SV205 camera, and so I ordered this one.
This is the camera that I used for the following pictures.
(Copernicus Crater)
So as you can see, I am more than happy with this shot, as mentioned before I don't have a tracker, but I managed to shoot 100 shots of the moon and then blended them together in Autostakkert (free software).
As I was looking into sharpening the images, RC-Astro have made blurxterminator available in another program called Siril (this is free too). I downloaded a trial version of BlurXterminator, and I couldn't believe just how well my images looked after processing in there.
The above shot is Copernicus Crater, with a span around 58 miles across, it is often called the "Monarch of the Moon." It's a fairly young crater on the moon and it's age is approximately 800 million years old (still sounds old to me lol).
(Jupiter)
While I was testing out the camera, I also pointed the telescope to Jupiter, you could see the Galilean moons Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto when I was setting the camera up, however to feature them on the image, Jupiter was blown out, so I thought I'd just concentrate on the big planet. Running through BlurXterminator again really brough the image out again, the same procedure as the moon pic with around 100 shots blended etc.
(Mare Imbrium)I
The final shot is of Mare Imbrium (Sea Of Rains), I love how the mountain range kind of hooks around, it reminds me of looking at an satellite picture of some coastline.
I really need to get out with the scope again, as it's just after summer solstice it doesn't get dark early, I can't wait until next month where for me, that's when Milky Way season starts, and I am so many plans for shots as I'm wanting to get in the shortlist for Astronomy Photographer Of The Year 19 (2027), so fingers crossed I can pull off a shot worthy of that.
I really hope you like the pics.
Thanks for reading.
