Astronomy

I recently bought a 8" telescope (Aug 2002). Eventually this page will become a record of objects I see and their pictures. For now I have been experimenting with a CCD camera to take pictures and the first set of pictures I took are below. All these pictures were taken with the help of Prashanth - co-conspirator in our star gazing trips

They are pictures of the moon. These pictures were taken by placing a ripped out webcam (removing the lens and exposing just the CCD chip inside) at the focus of the telescope without using any eyepiece.



The mpeg version of the full movie of the moon as captured by the camera is here. movie1 movie2 movie3

The movie plays at 30fps although I actually recorded it at 15fps. The mpeg tool I used cannot create 15fps mpegs from raw AVI streams. The movement of the moon is the actual real-time apparent movement of the moon (because of the rotation of the earth) in the sky as seen through the telescope.

Saturn

Similar videos of Saturn. As expected it looks much smaller than the moon :-)
movie1 movie2 movie3