Yelagiri Skies

I had gone to Yelagiri this weekend with some of my friends at IIT Madras along with Dr. Suresh Mohan. We were joined by the guys from Bangalore Astronomical Society at Yelagiri. What skies! People living in Chennai MUST visit a place like that to get a feel of what we are missing! Simply stunning.

I initially started off into a Messier Marathon. I managed to get a glimpse of at least 30 Messier Objects, 20 out of which I found myself. But a few hours into the night, I gave up the marathon and shifted to photography. I don’t own any high-end Astrophotography hardware. Nevertheless, it’s great fun to capture the night sky in my Canon Powershot A540. Below is Orion, the Hunter though my camera. Easily the best photo that I’ve taken till now.

Details: Canon Powershot A540, f2.6, ISO 800, 10 exposures of 15 seconds each. Aligned and stacked using Registax4 running on Wine

 

Besides, I got to meet many amateuro-professional astronomers and astrophotographers. The highlight of the night was Mr. Hemant’s photos of Eta Carinae and the never disappointing Omega Centauri.

Night was great fun, but we ended doing college assignment work in our resort in Yelagiri during the daytime A weekend that I’ll never forget.

Some shots of the equipment:

Hemant’s Meade 80ED APO, Arun’s Maede 10 inch

Hemant’s 12 inch telescope, Dr Suresh’s Orion 80ED, 80 mm Guidescope

 

Night Skies ..

Can you guess the time of the day when the above photo was taken? (Click on the photo for a bigger version). Would you believe it if I said 2 AM? Oh yes, 2 AM it is! Maybe the stars in the photo can convince you

We, Astronomy Club, IIT Madras held a session yesterday night at the Sangam Grounds. I tried out some shots of the sky using a Canon Powershot A540 with its shutter open for 15 seconds. And in the wee hours of the night I get photos like the one above! Clearly, this was my first time in taking such long exposures!

I managed to capture Ursa Major (which came out very well). That’s the one below

I also captured some afocal shots of the moon.

My (alomst) first shot at Astrophotography!

Aside: my Hackergotchi Tutorial is first on google! <Search>