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Forum: Pentax K-5 & K-5 II
12-11-2018, 04:48 PM
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I shot another comet last weekend.... 46P/Wirtanen. This one appears really large (much larger than the moon), even though the actual comet is quite small. I shot this with my Takahashi FSQ106ED scope and my Pentax K5II.
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Forum: Pentax K-5 & K-5 II
09-28-2018, 02:55 PM
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Here another couple shots taken with my modified K-5 camera... Helix Nebula and Comet 21P Giacobini/Zinner in conjunction with Messier 37
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Forum: Pentax K-5 & K-5 II
06-19-2018, 09:11 AM
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I had the IR-cut filter and anti aliasing filter removed a couple months back, and now have a capable astronomy camera with a bare sensor. I think it was about $250 conversion at spencer's camera, and is now a capable atro-photography camera.
The Eagle Nebula with the Pillars of Creation in the center I shot 90 lights and 30 darks at 45-second exposures and ISO 400 with my Skywatcher Maksutov-Newtonian 190.
The Lagoon/Trifid Nebulas with Webb's Cross in the top right corner I shot 90 lights and 30 darks at 30-sec exposures and ISO 400 with my Takahashi FSQ106ED.
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Forum: Pentax K-5 & K-5 II
05-11-2017, 05:03 PM
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Another shot using my K-5 camera. Prime focus on a Skywatcher MN190 telescope. Enjoy!
Cigar Galaxy (Messier 82) and Bode's Galaxy (Messier 81)
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Forum: Pentax K-5 & K-5 II
10-01-2016, 11:49 AM
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XLXW,
Schmidt Cassagrains are not great for deep sky astrophotography. You can do it but there are certain things that will help make it work well. First, the mirror is not fixed, so for long exposures your image can drift, and cause star trails. Second you are working with F/10, and that is pretty slow, and many of the SC don't have a good flat field that causes the stars to warp near the edge of the frame. Also, you need an equatorial mount to track earth's rotation for at least an hour. the For long exposures with a SC telescope you need an off-axis autoguider to account for the mirror moving while tracking the sky. The Ring Nebula is pretty bright and so is the moon. You wouldn't have to go very far to image the ring nebula. The moon is very bright, and only needs a short exposure. The ring nebula on and f/10 needs at least 30second exposure. The Iris nebula is quite faint and even with my f/5.3 I took 66 images of one minute at ISO800 (would have liked to get over a hundred). The Dumbbel Nebula and most globular star clusters are also pretty bright, so again, you can get away with 30 second exposures. But you will need to stack at least 40 of them to pull out the details. I use a free program that I downloaded called Stellarium to plan what I want to photograph.
Hope this helps.
Eric
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Forum: Pentax K-5 & K-5 II
09-29-2016, 04:52 PM
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Pete,
I now have an Skywatcher Maksutov Newtonian MN190 telescope that I mount on a Orion Atlas Pro AZ/EQ-G mount with the "Orion Awesome Autoguider" Package. To focus precisely I have a Bahtinov mask. The mount can control the camera so I just set it up to track at a specific object and take 40 shots or so and stack them in Deep Sky Stacker and do further editing in Photoshop. This telescope has an amazing flat field and is my dedicated deep sky astrograph.
Here is a shot of the Iris Nebula.
Enjoy!
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Forum: Pentax K-5 & K-5 II
08-26-2016, 06:48 PM
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The Pentax K-5 is definitely a great camera for astro photography! Here I shot the Trifid (with M21 in the corner) and the Lagoon Nebula.
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Forum: Pentax K-5 & K-5 II
04-24-2016, 08:57 AM
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Pete/Aaron,
Thanks! All exposures were 30 seconds. However, by stacking them, the noise gets really low, and I am able to extract the faint parts with a very steep S-curve in DDS without blowing out the stars. I used Oloneo to tonemap the 16-bit image and pull out more contrast.
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Forum: Pentax K-5 & K-5 II
04-23-2016, 07:03 PM
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Great Orion Nebula I shot a couple of months ago. I stacked 60 shots of 30 second exposures at ISO 80. I attached my K-5 at prime focus to a Skywatcher Maksutov-Newtonian 190mm telescope with a mount tracking the rotation of the earth assisted with an autoguider. Used Deep Sky Stacker to add all exposures together, and photoshop and Oloneo for final processing.
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Forum: Pentax K-5 & K-5 II
10-04-2015, 09:02 PM
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Here is another shot using my Pentax K-5 and the Bigma,with the O_GPS1. The tracking is important here...
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Forum: Pentax K-5 & K-5 II
10-04-2015, 06:41 PM
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Sorry to hear about that, you must have been bummed!
Attached is are my shots The first one I used a bigma lens with a Pentax k-5II and GPS-01. The second I used a Pentax K-5 on a 5" telescope with reasonable tracking. The third I composed an HDR photo with the same telescope.
Awesome shots everyone!!
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Forum: Pentax K-5 & K-5 II
04-07-2015, 10:35 PM
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I did a test shot of the M42 from my parking lot early this year. I will try again next year in a dark location.
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Forum: Pentax K-5 & K-5 II
01-17-2015, 01:51 PM
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You take a photo of the subject, and then you move the camera a little such that there are vey few stars in the frame. Then you unfocus the camera and take a photo. In photoshop you take the blurry image and add it as a layer and select difference to reduce the light pollution.
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Forum: Pentax K-5 & K-5 II
01-17-2015, 12:09 AM
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Comet Lovejoy. Taken near Los Angeles. I subtracted the light pollution from the photo to get this shot. Used a Celestron 5i telescope and tracked the comet. The comet was not visible to the naked eye here, so I use the O-GPS-1 and my 40mm prime to spot the comet in relation to other stars and scanned the region with the telescope until I found it.
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Forum: Pentax K-5 & K-5 II
10-20-2014, 06:53 PM
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Today the sun had huge sunspots, visible with the naked eye (wearing solar glasses).
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Forum: Pentax K-5 & K-5 II
10-08-2014, 04:21 PM
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I also took some shots with the same camera mounted on my Bigma (50-500mm) @ 7sec exposure 500mm F/8 ISO100 with the O-GPS-1 astrotracker
I cropped the photo and kept the star to the left to show no star trails.
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Forum: Pentax K-5 & K-5 II
10-08-2014, 01:36 PM
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Let the lunar eclipse uploads begin...
Pentax K-5 on a Celestron Nexstar 5i altaz tracking 1250mm f/10
First photo ISO 100 8sec exposure
Second photo ISO 100 3sec exposure
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Forum: Pentax K-5 & K-5 II
05-31-2013, 07:36 PM
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Thanks Suhndog, I have a long way to go. I used my K-5 on a 10" cassegrain telescope with 2500mm focal length. I set the telescope on an equatorial mount and adjusted it as time passed. Then when I was ready to take photos, I set the camera on continuous shooting for remote. Then a single press of the remote button will make the camera rapidly take photos continuously.
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Forum: Pentax K-5 & K-5 II
05-31-2013, 06:01 AM
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Valy: I like your sun shot!. What solar filter did you use? I have used a Kendrik solar filter on my Bigma.
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Forum: Pentax K-5 & K-5 II
05-30-2013, 09:27 PM
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And then here.... my second attempt at photographing Saturn. This is comprised of 40 images with my K-5 and stacked using registax 6. The seeing was much better too, enabling me to get this quality with only 40 photos.
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Forum: Pentax K-5 & K-5 II
05-27-2013, 03:54 AM
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My first attempt at photographing Saturn.. The seeing was not good at all last night. This is a single image, where I reduced noise in the post processing and increased sharpness. Still, the K-5 is not a great camera for planetary photography. Still I haven't looked at Saturn in 30 years and I was good to see it again. A better way to photograph planets is to take a video of the planets with a camera with a smaller chip dedicated for doing astro-photography. Using stacking software, one can increase the quality of the image significantly.
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Forum: Pentax K-5 & K-5 II
12-25-2012, 10:58 AM
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In May I went to Albuquerque and got some shots of the Solar Eclipse. I used my Bigma (Sigma 50-500mm). It was such an amazing experience.
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Forum: Pentax K-5 & K-5 II
12-25-2012, 10:50 AM
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My shot of the Venus Transit, while a jet passed by, a half hour before sunset. I used my Bigma (Sigma 50-500mm) and a Kendrick Solar Filter.
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