Capturing Super Lunar Eclipse and Orion Nebula

I recently had some pretty good luck capturing both a shot of the total lunar eclipse super moon back on Jan. 21 and the Orion Nebula.

The pictures are below. I didn’t use any special tricks other than adjusting the exposure time, the ISO, and the aperture setting. Generally for dim objects like nebula, I rely on the F1.5 aperture setting on my Samsung Galaxy S9 with 800 ISO and anywhere from .25s to 1s exposure time. Really, anything more than 1 second at the 40x magnification or so I’m using can cause motion blur.

The moon is easier to shoot, being brighter, closer, and larger. But because of those things it can be a challenge to get a sharp focus between my phone’s automatic and/or manual focus settings and the telescope itself. For the eclipse picture, there did seem to be a little distortion in the cold night air. I’ve gotten sharper pictures of the moon on other nights.

Still trying to get back to writing, but sitting down to write this little blog has been a struggle by itself.

Orion Nebula captured with a Samsung Galaxy S9 and an Orion XT8 Telescope.
The Orion Nebula. Impressive amount of color for a short exposure time with a Samsung Galaxy S9.
Lunar Eclipse from Jan. 21, 2019.
Lunar Eclipse from Jan. 21, 2019. Check the stars peeking out from around edge of the moon.

Curse of the New Telescope – Orion SkyQuest XT8

This is just a quick post to get something new up on this site. I upgraded my telescope to the SkyQuest XT8 and it is quite the upgrade over my old PowerSeeker 120EQ. The most obvious difference being the size, followed by the fact it’s a full Dobsonian telescope.

A full size men’s basketball to give a sense of scale.

The new scope weight almost 40 pounds and is relatively awkward to carry outside the house, but once I do get it set up it’s usually worth it. However, I’ve been struck with the curse of a new telescope. There’s really only be a few “clear” nights and on those nights the humidity sat around 90%. I did manage to snap pictures of a few things over two separate nights (see below). These pictures are much improved over the ones I’ve been taking with my 120EQ, but they also don’t represent what this new telescope can really do.

I’m also hoping, though it’s highly unlikely I’ll be able to manage it with my Galaxy S9 camera, to take some pictures of the faintest hint of some deep sky objects. I need to be able to see them in my scope, first, and the weather has just not granted me the opportunity.

Vega shines brightly.

Dusty Mars.

Pretty moon pic.

Fuzzy Saturn. Blame the dew forming on the mirror.

A fuzzy but clearer picture of Jupiter than I’ve been able to take before. Blame the humidity.

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