| Astro Photography |
| November 2007 Viewing Comet Holmes thru a Tayir 33 |
| This area, just south of Los Angeles, is very light polluted, I held no real hope of capturing an image of such a diffuse object. But I brought out the camera and lens on a clear warm evening and set it up to try my luck. |
| My Tayir had an internal issue which caused the infinity mark to be inaccurate, so I needed a target to be close to star focus. Luckily, one presented itself. I initially used the K6B teleconverter which brought the focal length close to 600mm. (But the angle of view is 1.93 times reduced on this body, similar to about 1200mm.) | 
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| I checked a few sites online to locate the area in the sky. I got lucky, as Perseus was nearly overhead. Mirfak was visible, but not the comet. I made a slight focus adjustment on Mirfak and took a shot. Just below my target star was a diffuse puffball. I had to try different ISOs and times to get a usable image. |
| The contrast reduction caused by the teleconverter made it necessary to remove it to image the comet. |
| Even though the moon has set, the
light pollution causes objects in the sky to be somewhat less than distinct.
In order to gather enough photons to get any kind of image on this still unfamiliar camera
required a 20 second exposure. Taken 10/15/07, one of the last nights cloudless enough to
see the comet before the moon got too bright. E-330 - TAYIR 300MM at f8, 20 seconds. |
The bright trail above the comet is Mirfak, the brightest in Perseus.
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| I do not yet know this camera well enough to be certain that I have the noise reduction and filtering set optimally. |
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| Low angle shot to the moon, soon to set in the east. |
| This is a photo of the LCD screen of
the E-330 in 10x focus mode. I selected an area of the moon with a contrasting feature,
the craters, to assist in getting clear focus. At this magnification, the desired area
quickly moved out of view. (The optical viesfinder is useless for this application.) I had to offset and defocus this shot of the 10x focus mode on the Live View to avoid interference patterns. In actuality focusing is more difficult than it should be since this view is the equivalent of a 12,000 mm lens on 35mm and the single point support is not the most stable. |
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| I tried to track C. Holmes from Mirphak, on the left below, to Algol, on the right. I failed, perhaps because of increasing moonglow in the days following my initial capture. |
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