Rho Ophiuchus and Antares Nebulae Complex

Well, I finally finished my first DSLR astrophotograph and my first astrophoto in nearly 4 years. It was a very steep learning curve, but I came close to my original visualization. I have more information at the astrophotograph webpage below. I hope you enjoy the image and I look forward to more compositions this summer.

Rho Ophiuchus with Canon 350D and 135mm f2L lens

PhotoTech EDU at Google

I stumbled across a collection of presentation videos archived at Google Videos that discuss various aspects of photography in detail. The topics vary widely and even include some astrophotography presentations. There is a ton of material here and I have only begun to review it. The material is very detailed and at times overly technical, but hey it is Google. One interesting tidbit I found was a discussion at the end of Ben Lutch's Astrophotography presentation where Google is mapping the entire heavens with images from anyone willing to contribute their astronomical photos to the project. Depending on your interests, there is a wealth of information on this site. I encourage you to check out the topics and see what catches your eye. Here is a link to the search results for "phototech EDU" at Google.

Phototech EDU at Google

Like falling off a bike

Great news! I finished painting the house. So with that project out of the way I can now spend some time at the processing computer. That is exactly what I did today. It was a very frustrating first few hours. I can't believe how difficult it was for me to get back into the swing of enhancing astrophotographs, but it was like I had never worked on them before. I was constantly "falling off of the bike" and I nearly gave up entirely. At one point I thought I simply did not have enough data for the image to work the way I visualized. And then, it hit me, and I regained momentum and have successfully gone through one iteration of image enhancement on the Rho Ophiuchus image. I have plenty of data to work with and I am pretty confident I can get the image to what my initial visualization was for this composition. It takes a great deal of time and many iterations for enhancements to come to completion. I also like to step away from the image and let things "stew" a bit as I contemplate the direction the image is taking. So, I am working very hard on new stuff, it is just taking some time to get through the process and get things posted. Thanks for your interest in Jeff Ball Photography and there is much more to come.

P.S. I also spent several hours today preparing for my upcoming presentation at the Almost Heaven Star Party. I hope you can make the event and I hope to post my presentation on the website after the event in August.

A winner of a night

Another night under the stars and this time the transparency cooperated. Last Friday night I visited the wonderfully dark skies of my friend Rob Adkins home in Wayne County. We had a wonderful night of photographing and viewing. The dark lanes of the Milky Way were easily visible from Sagittarius to Scorpius, even with bright Jupiter in the middle of them. We viewed numerous deep sky objects with and without the OIII filter. The views were just stunning on this night and compared favorably to any I have had anywhere over the years. We viewed Venus, Saturn, Jupiter, Neptune, Uranus, and Mars-all in one night. The seeing really steadied nicely for some wonderful early morning views of Jupiter.

Upon first review, it looks like I have at least 2 hours of very good data to work with on Rho Ophiuchus. Astrophotography images come slowly as preparation, imaging, and processing are extremely involved. I hope to have the image up soon. I am about 50% finished with painting the house. Once that project is completed, I can get back into updating images and the website.

Astrophotography night out

Last night was my first opportunity to re-visit the night sky with astrophotography. The night was a complete success technically-meaning that all gear worked as planned and image acquisition was dead-on. The only issue was that the Clear Sky Clock (astronomer's main source for weather conditions) missed a small system of high cirrus clouds coming in from Ohio and it really reduced contrast in the southern Milky Way area. The imaging system is a modified Canon 350D and 135mm f2 L lens. The target last night was the Rho Ophiuchus area. The camera gear is riding on top of my friend Dave Tolley's G11 mount with a TV101 scope used for final polar alignment. It was a great night of practice for me since it has been nearly 4 years since I last imaged. I am very enthusiastic about the compositions to come from this setup and I am hoping for clear skies in the near future to work on these new astronomical images. Take care and stay tuned for more.