Increasing Vision

A photographer’s personal journey into deep-sky astrophotography, from mild interest through the slow but inexorable descent into madness. Lessons learned. Pitfalls explored (from the bottom). Equipment choices, techniques and resources for beginners: how to put a toe in the deep-sky or planetary waters and avoid most of the piranhas.

Rick Wayne is a husband, a dad, and a software engineer for UW Soils, where he writes agronomic decision-support software (motto: “Sweet Bog where do I put all these tons of cow poop?”)

He is an Outdoor Emergency Care instructor and runs the regional instructor-development program for the Ski Patrol, and holds National Appointment #11910...

Selecting Camera Lenses for Astrophotography, and their use in Narrowband Imaging

Telescopes for astrophotography can be large and heavy instruments, costing thousands of dollars. For those who own DSLR cameras, there are a wide selection of available lenses that make an excellent lightweight, low cost, and easy to use platform for starting in astrophotography. We will look at some advantages (and disadvantages) of using camera lenses when photographing the night sky and examine characteristics of lenses ideally suited for astrophotography. In the second half of the presentation, we will take an introductory look at using narrowband filters for astrophotography, with emphasis on wide-field astrophotography...

MAS is back!

We’re still observing public health advisories to avoid any face to face meetings so for our April meeting, MAS is going virtual!

Friday, April 10 our own Jeff Shokler will present “Wonders of the Universe: Exploring the Night Sky Through Astrophotography.” During his presentation he will share images captured of a wide variety of astronomical objects including the Moon, planets, lunar and solar eclipses, star clusters, nebulae, galaxies, and much more. Over the course of the presentation he will take the audience on a journey from objects close to home to those found in some of the most distant reaches and earliest time periods of the universe...

Chasing Shadows: Planning for and Imaging ISS Transits of the Sun and Moon – Jeffrey E. Shokler

How do you catch something travelling at 17,500 mph as it moves between you and a target that might be 92 million miles away (or maybe only 240,000 miles away)? Longtime MAS member and astrophotographer Jeffrey Shokler will show us how to plan for International Space Station transits of the Sun and Moon, and also about his recent experiences capturing images of those events. You’ll learn about on-line planning tools, strategies for the week before, day before, and day of in terms of positioning and set-up. Jeff will also share the approaches he has taken to both capturing and processing the transit data in order to create finished images of ISS transits.

About the Speaker:
Jeffrey E...

Observing Our Solar System – Martin Mika

The talk will outline the basics of our solar system: history, characteristics of the planets, how they move, and how to observe them with amateur telescopes. I will then also discuss some imaging techniques and touch on citizen science projects that can be undertaken by amateurs, with a few examples from some of the top planetary imagers around the world.

About the Speaker:
Martin Mika is a long time observer and astrophotographer and is the Observatory Director for the MAS.

Trifid Nebula (M20) – Photo by Jeffrey Shokler

The Trifid presents the unusual combination of an emission nebula, a reflection nebula, and a dark nebula all in one object! The Trifid lies 5,200 light years from us in the constellation Sagittarius.

Messier 21 (M21; NGC 6531) is the beautiful, small open cluster containing 57 stars that is visible to the upper left of the Trifid. M21 is 3,900 light years from us.

Canon 5D Mark II (astromodified; Baader UV/IR cut)
Stellarvue 130EDT (f7)
Celestron CGEM mount
1250 ISO
20x4min subexposures (80min/1.3hr total integration)
Guided (Lacerta MGEN II)
PixInsight (calibrated, registered, stacked, post-processed)
Photoshop (finish processing)

Landscape Astrophotography
Presented by John Rummel

Have you been impressed (and envious) of the beautiful night landscape/sky shots you’ve seen floating around the internet? Do you wish that you could capture a breathtaking Milky Way vista above your favorite camping spot or mountain view? Odds are pretty good that you CAN do this, and that the camera that you own right now is capable of getting these shots. This presentation will show you how it’s done.

This talk will explore the photographic techniques necessary to capture thrilling and inspirational shots of the night sky with impressive terrestrial landscapes. The presentation will proceed in three parts:

1) Locating and choosing opportunities to shoot such scenes,
2) Camera settings, techniq...