Camera Labs

@ eVolutioN:
Since we have around 90+% cloud cover tonight, I decided to take your suggestion and give Stellarium a quick try...
Very impressive program! Took me all of 5 minutes to figure out that the bright star near the center of my Iris result is Arcturus.
Definitely a resource that I'd take with me - if my laptop ran for more than 10 minutes off-charger.
A nifty site, Heavens Above, has printable star maps available that I can take with me. Those will get me pointed in the right direction, at least. I can then verify things with Stellarium when I get home.
Heck, I'll probably even use Stellarium to plan my outings.
Thanks again for the tip!

Floyd.

You're welcome! I just did a quick search, and I'm kinda surprised that it's the first time Stellarium has been mentioned on these forums.

In my opinion, it's definitely the best program for learning more about the night sky and doing astrophotography.

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Flickr

Yes , Stelarium is very good one, but try the Worldwide telescope, free too, from Microsoft. You can get efemerides too, very well done, a bit more complex, but I think worth trying.

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Radu
Canon PowerShot S100
Canon 50D , SIGMA 10-20 f3.5 ,Canon EF 24-105 L IS USM, Canon EF 100/2.8 macro Canon EF 50/1.4 ,Canon EF 85 f1.8,Canon EF-S17-85 4-5.6 Old Tamron 28-300 inherited from my Canon Rebel G film camera
Canon580EXII
http://www.errre.net

Ive got both Stellarium and WWT, and for beginners who want to know which star theyre seeing, or what you can see tonight, Stellarium is the winner.

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Ruben

Panasonic DMC-FZ18, Panasonic DMC-FZ28, Canon G5, Canon 350D, Canon 50D + BG-E2N
Tamron 17-50 2.8, Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L USM,
Canon 18-55 II plus lots of Minolta MD/M42 lenses and bodies

For taking with you out, consider a rotating star chart- do a search at Amazon for "The Night Sky" it's about $12 the large one or $7 the smaller one, they have them for all the latitude ranges, and it's really helpful, you have a chart for the whole year. Of course you don't have the planets there, but Stellarium or other software will give you their location.
You may consider a small flashlight that you'll modify (wrap some transparent red celofane or some other red transparent plastic that you can get from food packages ), that lets you look at the chart in darkness whithout ruining your night vision for a while. If you want to buy one, there are a few red flashlights on Amazon too.
Hope that helps and that I haven't told you things that you already know

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Radu
Canon PowerShot S100
Canon 50D , SIGMA 10-20 f3.5 ,Canon EF 24-105 L IS USM, Canon EF 100/2.8 macro Canon EF 50/1.4 ,Canon EF 85 f1.8,Canon EF-S17-85 4-5.6 Old Tamron 28-300 inherited from my Canon Rebel G film camera
Canon580EXII
http://www.errre.net

Ruben you are right. Stelarium is the best one for beginners.

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Radu
Canon PowerShot S100
Canon 50D , SIGMA 10-20 f3.5 ,Canon EF 24-105 L IS USM, Canon EF 100/2.8 macro Canon EF 50/1.4 ,Canon EF 85 f1.8,Canon EF-S17-85 4-5.6 Old Tamron 28-300 inherited from my Canon Rebel G film camera
Canon580EXII
http://www.errre.net

And remember: Pictures you see in magazines you will NEVER get until you have more than 50000$$ and experience.
Of course you can start with a telescope, EQ5 mount with motor, notebook, extra follow camera and mount your dSLR on it, but that's way too difficult to start with.
What Im doing is I made a barndoor mount (free, you can simply make it yourself) and with that it's possible to get nice exposures of 10 minutes.
Set the camera on a high ISO, aperture wide open, and bulb.
That's the best way to start with:P

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Ruben

Panasonic DMC-FZ18, Panasonic DMC-FZ28, Canon G5, Canon 350D, Canon 50D + BG-E2N
Tamron 17-50 2.8, Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L USM,
Canon 18-55 II plus lots of Minolta MD/M42 lenses and bodies

I didn't have my imaging scope last but I gave it a shot on my 12" dobsonian telescope. I took an higher iso to freeze the atmosphere

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Canon T2i (550D)- Tamron 17-50 F2.8 Non-VC, Sigma 70-200mm F2.8 EX DG OS HSM, Canon EF-S 55-250mm F4.5-F5.6
http://www.astronomyphotography.com

Sorry, forgot about this thread, my emails seem to have stopped.

The un-cropped moon shot is good on the first page, maybe a slight crop to later its positioning and Id leave it at that.

As for stellarium its a great piece of software. One of my jobs is to replace to default image with a pano of where my set up sits to I can easily see what features are obscured by neighbours / the house etc.

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Lee Diggle
My Astronomy Blog | My Photography Gallery

So if everyone posts, so do I. It's shot with an old 70-300 mm lens.

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Karol Mozdzierz
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Nikon D5000, 18-55 DX 3.5-5.6, 70-300 4.5-5.6