Photographic Records

Keeping records is something essential during in each night sky observation. I usually usually store my records in a notebook. But this time I have decided do something challenging by photographing images viewed from my eye piece. I had to do it as I do not own a CCD and special camera which connects to the eye piece. Written Observations are not appealing as I do not have enough evidence. Photographing through an eye piece may be impossible but I tried my best to capture some pictures of the moon. The pictures are fuzzy and less detailed due to the high brightness of the moon. It was not an easy task as it involved a lot of trail and error. It took 3 hours to produce a few better images of the moon.

Instead of using normal photographing techniques, I used a unique technique which seems rather unusual. I let the beam of light emitted from the lens to hit into the lens of the camera. In split seconds I have to capture the image once the light hits the camera lens or else the image will lose focus. Some of the images captured were abrupt and partial while most were unwanted glares. Only a few images had some clarity with less details. I could not capture more details due to the extreme brightness of the moon.

As shown in the right, this is one of the partial
image of the full moon taken on 10th May 2009
around 9pm to 12am. The image has hardly any details.
The picture on the bottom right
is the elevated image of that same moon.
The darker regions shows the lower depths of the moon.

The picture of the left was the best image taken as it captured more than 90% of the full moon. The image on the right is the elevated image of the one on the left. However, this image only showed details of the large craters.

The picture on the right shows an
unwanted glare on bottom right.
This is the best image taken
with glare.

The images are only magnified 35x as it is possible to capture the whole moon with higher magnification. The actual size of the moon taken by the same camera is shown below.




In future I hope to take pictures of bright planets like Jupiter. This will be much difficult as the image is smaller and the glaring effect is higher. I will also capture a few details of the Sun using a sun box provided the sky is clear with less cloud cover.