Committing my Camera to the Stars

DSLR cameras like my Canon 550D are designed to produce pictures with the correct colour appearance during the day, despite the fact that the camera’s CCD chip is sensitive to the infra red emissions from warm objects. DSLRs achieve good daylight colour balance by having an infra-red filter. At night, the sky is not hot but ionized hydrogen gas clouds amongst the stars emit light at 650 µm, 95% of which is blocked by the DSLRs filter. Changing the filter in the camera to one that passes 650 µm light will show more colour in star images, committing the camera to the stars since day photos will no longer have correct colour.

I purchased a “FBCF400D DSLR Conversion Filter (Baader 400D BCF) for Canon 400D” from Alpine Astronomical http://www.alpineastro.com/ and had the conversion done by Anderson Camera Repairs http://www.andersoncamera.com.au/ . The process voids the warranty from Canon but Anderson Camera Repairs warrant their own work for 6 months.

Scorpius “tail” and M6 and M7 1:34AM March 19th, 2012

f/1.8. ISO200. 16 x 8 sec.

A much improved image which shows the Milky Way around M7.

Orion 8 pm March 23, 2012

f/1.8 20 x 6 sec each. ISO200. Ooooooh, shiny ! Seeing different intensities of colour in M42 was fun. The elongated star shapes are camera shake as my tripod is flimsy and heavy trucks drive past my house.

Crux and Carina 8.15pm March 31, 2012

The location was the Southern Astronomical Society’s meeting site in Coomera in the yellow zone on my light pollution map and much darker than my home site in the orange/red zone. Settings were ISO400 ; f/1.8 ; 8 x 8sec but one shot was omitted after doing an image quality check in Nebulosity.

Once I realized that some of the “light pollution” was actually Milky Way, processing these shots was a lot of fun. In the absence of heavy traffic, the camera shake seemed to be a lot less than the previous image.

The dark areas in the Milky Way under the Cross known as the Coal Sack Dark Nebula (Caldwell 99) were nicely visible. Zooming in on this image showed several interesting objects.

The Jewel Box Cluster (NGC 4755) near Becrux showed at least 9 stars.

In the top right of the main image was a bright red area which is the Lambda Centauri Cluster IC 2944 in the Running Chicken Nebula IC 2948. Above and to the left is the Pearl Cluster NGC 3766.

Zooming in on the Running Chicken Nebula showed more of the details of the Lambda Centauri Cluster but the resolution was not sufficient to show more detail in the nebula.

Carina 8.15pm March 31, 2012

The location was the Southern Astronomical Society’s meeting site.

f/1.8 ISO400. 8 x 8 sec.

This image has been installed as my desktop on my iMac, iPad and iPhone and then inflicted on all my friends and relatives as well ! For an untracked camera snapshot, this is very pretty. Zooming in shows lots of interesting things.

The star clusters within the Eta Carinae Nebula (NGC 3372).

Open Cluster NGC 3532

Open Cluster NGC 3532

Open Cluster IC 2602, the Southern Pleiades

These images more than met my expectations and hopes for modifying the camera as well as showing that if you zoom in just a little bit more, you can see these really interesting things ….. which is what telescopes are for ……..