Omega Centauri (NGC 5139)

A swarming of about 10 million stars, located some 16000 light years from earth. The dark sky is required to glimpse the cluster with the eye alone, but a telescope reveals a glorious cluster of densely packed suns!

For this image I used my Canon DSLR + Skywatcher 4" refractor + EQ5 Single Motor near Bhuj, India.

30 Jpeg x 45 seconds @ ISO 800

10 Darks

Stacked in Deep Sky Stacker and Processed in Photoshop CS5

Saturn @ Opposition

The ringed planet shone at magnitude +0.7 and its angular size was around 19" providing a better view through telescopes. Yesterday night before taking the video of Saturn I made observation using my 10-inch Dobsonian Telescope and I could easily see its Five bright Moons.

For this image, I shot a video using my Canon EOS 550D @ Crop Video Mode attached to the 10-inch, f/4.7 Dobsonian Telescope. I then stacked the video in Registax 6 and post processed in Photoshop CS5.

Comet C/2011 L4 Panstarrs, Seen and Imaged!!

Finally after a long and hectic wait I was able to spot and photographed the comet C/2011 L4 Panstarrs in the bright evening sky shortly after sunset. I first spotted the comet through my 10x50 Olympus Binoculars and then captured in my camera. It was a few degree west of the Crescent Moon.

Canon 550D + Tamron 70-300 VC Lens @ 175mm

Panstarrs Above City Lights!

Canon 50D + Tamron 70-300 VC @ 70mm

VY Canos Majoris

VY Canis Major marked with  arrow

vy canis majoris finder chart

Can you see that red dot near the center of this image? It's a star, very faint and requires at least a binocular to glimpse it! Actually the star is known as VY Canis Majoris and is the largest known star in the sky!! How large it is? Well, to get idea how large this star is, watch this video...

The biggest star - VY Canis Majoris

Image taken on 3rd January 2013 using the canon 550D + 55-250mm lens + eq5 mount

The Night The Moon Stood Still!

Yes, I made the moon still for a while and let the stars move!! Nope, this is just a result of my imagination and a trick of blending photographs taken at same time. Below is the details of camera settings and software used for this photo...

For Moon:
Camera: Canon EOS 550D
Lens: Canon EF-S 55-250mm IS, was set to 250mm
Exposure: 1/400 seconds
F-stop: 7.1 and ISO Speed: 100

For Stars:
Camera: Canon EOS 550D
Lens: Canon 18-55 Kit set to 18mm
Exposure: 100 x 20 seconds
F-stop: 5 and ISO Speed: 200

Softwares: StarStax 0.52 and Photoshop CS6

Geminids 2012 Observing Report!

the only meteor I could capture!

We observed the Geminids during December 11-12 and December 12-13 and this time the meteor shower left a mark in my life as this was the most fertile shower I have ever witnessed! This time two amateurs Ambarish Gawande and Vivek Wadekar from Pune and Mumbai respectively joined us who were visiting Kutch (in fact Gujarat!) for the first time and were very eager to observe and photograph meteor shower from one of the darkest places in India. 

The first day we went to Dhosa-Mahadev, our regular stargazing spot near Bhuj and spent most of the time in photographing the meteors. Though we spotted more than 80 meteors during the session. Other friends from Bhuj also joined us and brought my 10-inch Dobsonian telescope. 

Star trails in the northern sky

Eastern star trails

The south-west

Cameras on their target!

The next day, four of us went to Vekariya Rann, exactly where the Tropic of Cancer passes through. It rained that afternoon but the sky became clear around 8 pm. From there we had the most clear sky for the Geminids! We had 6 cameras covering different directions of the sky. Our president Mr. Narendra Gor counted more than 500 meteors overall the session! The average was 2-3 meteors per minute and I must say we missed most of them. Most were faint and the camera didn't record most of them. However I was lucky to capture one along with Orion and its surrounding during the first day session.