Polaroid pictures

If you have photoshop, here is a neat and quick way of adding a twist to your favourite pictures.
A big thank you to Gavin Hoey for this free template which just takes a few clicks to use.
Gavin is an amazing photographer and teacher.
You can visit his website  at www.gavtrain.com

Jupiter with a webcam

This image was taken using my Meade Etx105PE scope fitted with a modified Microsoft lifecam.

Using Registax I combined 2000 images to reveal much more detail than you could see with the naked eye.

Four of Jupiter's 50 moons can be seen in the image as they orbit this giant planet some 400 million miles away.

From left to right they are, Europa,Callisto,Ganymede and Io.

The moons are very different and make intersting reading.

Hopefully Juno, sent to Jupiter on a oneway trip will uncover more of its secrets.

 

2012 Bournemouth Airshow Red Arrows

Another excellent display from the Red Arrows this year. They flew so close  that I could see how the colour is injected into the exhaust to produce the amazing coloured smoke.
I'm using this image as my laptop wallpaper.
Shooting in raw format helps as I can adjust things like exposure if its not exact when I get home.
I over exposed by 1 & 1/2 stops as the sky is always bright and it reduces the chances of getting just a silhouette. I chose ISO 100  and f9 but kept the shutter speed up as high as possible to freeze the high speed. 1/400 sec was fine as I also panned the camera as it passed by.

Andromeda Galaxy

My first attempt a photographing our neighbour in the universe.
This Galaxy can be seen overhead with a pair of binoculars and even the naked eye on a clear night.
Unfortunately I live in a light polluted area in southern England which makes it difficult to get very detailed images. Still its great fun trying.
I put the notes on the image as I was amazed that this object contains a trillion stars like our sun. Imagine who is looking back at me in our galaxy The Milky Way. Even  more odd is that they would be seeing the Earth as it was some 2.5 million years ago.

The Ring Nebula

This is my first attempt at Deep Space Imaging.

Its the Ring Nebula and through the eyepiece of the telescope it looks like a very small grey smoke ring from a cigarette.

Its in the constellation of Lyra which almost overhead this month. Lyra contains the really bright star Vega.

Using an unmodified Dslr, I was amazed to see how much more detail and colour is captured.

I am sure that experienced astrophotographers would see this image and and say that it is a poor attempt but it has given me a lot of pleasure to capture an image of an object that is about 11,800 trillion miles away.

Our Sun is a mere 93 million miles away.

Saturn what a gem.

Here is my first half decent image of the amazing Saturn. This image was taken with a microsoft  webcam connected to a Meade Etx 105 telescope.
A 90 second AVI file was shot at 10 frames a second. The resulting 900 images were stacked to magically reveal the detail that you cannot see with you eye.

Moon Shadow

I have finally got round to shooting through my telescope. This shot was taken with my Samsung point and shoot camera mounted above the eyepiece. Not bad for my first session. I like the way the shadow gives the craters depth. The Large crater in the middle by the shadow is Copernicus named after Nicolas Copernic a 16th century Polish astronomer.

Lady, our new puppy

I just had to put this picture on my blog. Very simple lighting setup by bouncing the on camera flash off the white ceiling. Camera set to manual 1/200 sec F5 and ISO 100 and set the flash on ETTL mode. Then just click the button. The flash does all the work using the ETTL to work out the correct amount of flash to use. I often use this simple setup in small rooms as it normally gives a well lit image without any fuss. Just what you need when someone says " get your camera Ian and take a picture".

Common Darter

IMG_4721, originally uploaded by Ian_Churchill2010.

Amazed to see this on the 27th November catching the weak suns rays in the bracken by a pond.

The Fragile Dandelion

How often is an interesting picture right under your feet.

This fragile Dandelion was just waiting for a gust of wind.

If you want an interesting image, take loads of pictures and look at things from a different angle and distance.