Space Photos

I have been taking some photos of planets.

This is Jupiter at a distance of about 800 million km.

This is Mars:

Taken with my Nikon D7000 via a T-mount and this telescope that I hired from the excellent Dark Sky Telescope Hire (It seems also be called a Classic 200P Dobsonian).

I’ve learned quite a lot about telescopes and the movements of planets (and that the ISS is very fast) from this adventure.

On the other hand I’ve also found it quite frustrating. Like a child, I expect any old telescope to let me see another planet filling the whole of my view like this:

(Image credit to NASA, via Wikipedia)

…whereas the reality is a little more disappointing. I find myself wondering what sort of telescope Galileo was using in 1610 when he identified four distinct moons of Jupiter. I’ll need to do some investigating of sites like this

This is, of course, all done accompanied by my little stargazer.