Venus, Mars, Hyades & Pleiades Conjunction

Greetings all, here is a shot that I'd like to share with you. It's a shot of the recent conjunction with Venus & Mars together with the Hyades and Pleiades winter star clusters. It's a super sight at the moment!
I got a new Canon digital camera over the weekend, and I could'nt wait to try it!. This is a 10 second exposure, 105mm lens, mounted on a tripod.
Enjoy!, Keith.

www.irishastronomy.org/user_resources/fi...%20April%202004..jpg


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Hi all,
I have just updated the Shannonside Astronomy Club's Website with two pairs of images taken on two sucessive nights by David Lillis.
One shows the progress of Venus through Pleiades and another pair of the Moon as it approached full this week.

Michael Scully KAC/SAC

All really nice images!
BTW Keith, which Canon camera did u get exactly, if you don't mind me asking :
Michael

Michael, It's a Canon Powershot A75 digital I picked it up last weekend, only on the market 2 weeks, the seller told me it retailed at near 500euro, I got in his sale for E379. What a great camera it is, up to 15 seconds exposure, full manual control, 3.2M pixels, really good picture quality, lots of quality features, I'd highly recommend this if you're looking for a quality astro digital. Can't wait to try it on planets through the scope

Website in (Swords, Dublin) www.cameras.irl.com
Phone: 01-8406678
Keith..

Keith,

Sounds like an absolute bargain! It's astonishing the value that's out there now with digital cameras!

Michael

Hi Keith,
Nice pic there, did you use a dark frame and did you process it on a pc ?
These digital cameras are the business, I took over fifty shots of the pleiades+venus, only a small fraction came out well, as I was experimenting with exposure and speed, but since its digital, you know instantly if your heading in the right or wrong direction, very handy.

BTW, what kind of scope are you going to try to image the planets with, one thing I found was if I tried imaging the planets with the canon is that the planets comeout as tiny disks, too small really, maybe a 3x or 4x barlow would help, the webcams really work well at this task.