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ASTROPHOTOGRAPHY

Aside from NMR spectroscopy, I have always loved both photography and astronomy, so after buying my children a telescope for Christmas and myself a digital camera, I started to take some pictures of the sky.  Here are a few of them.

These pictures were taken on the morning of November 9, 2004.  One can see earthshine on the crescent moon.  Below the moon is Jupiter and Venus.  On close inspection, in the wide angle shot, one can see the star Spica and the planet Mars above the largest tree.

This picture was taken just 2 days before the previous 2.  Note the relative motion of Venus and Jupiter and of course the absence of the moon.

These pictures of the sun were taken through a 6 inch Newtonian telescope using a solar filter.  One can clearly see sunspots.  The time interval between pictures is one day.  Note that the sunspots have moved.  This is due to the rotation of the sun.

This is a picture of the transit of Venus across the face of the sun on the morning of June 8, 2004.  It was taken with a 10X zoon lens at sunrise without any filters.

These are some of my favorite shots of our moon through a telescope.  All but the third shot  were taken with a web-cam from which I removed the optics. (click thumbnails for larger picture)

These shots were taken during the lunar eclipse on October 27, 2004. (click thumbnails for larger picture)

These are pictures of Jupiter.  One can clearly see the red spot in the first two. The first two were taken in the spring of 2004 and the third in the spring of 2005.  These pictures are the result of signal averaging between 20 and 40 pictures.

This is a shot of Mars from August 2003.  One can clearly see the southern polar ice cap as well as some darker areas of the planet.

These are shots of Saturn in the early spring of 2004 and the winter of 2005.

These are shots of the Northern Lights taken on November 8, 2004.