Atrial Fibrillation (AFib) Support Group
Atrial fibrillation (AF or afib) is an abnormal heart rhythm (cardiac arrhythmia) which involves the two small, upper heart chambers (the atria). Heart beats in a normal heart begin after electricity generated in the atria by the sinoatrial node spread through the heart and cause contraction of the heart muscle and pumping of blood.
During the worst years of my Afib sleep was very elusive. Over time I grew tired of looking at the ceiling, walking around in the house or around the neighborhood so I decided I needed a nighttime distraction. At 10 years old I became intrigued by astronomy as a result of seeing the aurora borealis under very dark skies over a lake while camping. Fast forward 32 years, I decided to pick up my first telescope to give me something to do on those long sleepless Afib nights. It didn't take long for me to try taking photos of the Moon with it and soon I wanted to photograph more. I researched and advanced into long exposure deep-sky imaging, which gave me countless targets to photograph. I started producing images of galaxies, nebula, star clusters and comets.
For me astrophotography was a great help in dealing with my Afib struggle and though I was sleep deprived sometimes, at least I had something to show for it. I had turned lemons into lemonade.
I thought I would share my gallery to offer a distraction for all of you struggling and for anyone that simply enjoys the wonders of the universe. It's amazing to capture ancient light that has been hurling through space for thousands of years. Some objects are so distant that the light I captured left its origin when dinosaurs roamed Earth. It's mind boggling to get our heads around such distances but equally mind-bogglng is the scale of these objects, some measure as wide or wider than they are distant.
Click on the photos until they reach the largest viewing size. The nebula and galaxies range in exposure times between 1 and 5 hours. The Heart Nebula ironically is my longest total exposure to date, 5 hours. Enjoy!
http://s3.photobucket.com/user/Nighthd/library/POTN%20Gallery?sort=6&page=1
Steve
For me astrophotography was a great help in dealing with my Afib struggle and though I was sleep deprived sometimes, at least I had something to show for it. I had turned lemons into lemonade.
I thought I would share my gallery to offer a distraction for all of you struggling and for anyone that simply enjoys the wonders of the universe. It's amazing to capture ancient light that has been hurling through space for thousands of years. Some objects are so distant that the light I captured left its origin when dinosaurs roamed Earth. It's mind boggling to get our heads around such distances but equally mind-bogglng is the scale of these objects, some measure as wide or wider than they are distant.
Click on the photos until they reach the largest viewing size. The nebula and galaxies range in exposure times between 1 and 5 hours. The Heart Nebula ironically is my longest total exposure to date, 5 hours. Enjoy!
http://s3.photobucket.com/user/Nighthd/library/POTN%20Gallery?sort=6&page=1
Steve
You truly did make some bad times worthwhile.
I recently went on a quest to find my great grandparents graves. In the cemetery there was a headstone inscribed "still trying to make lemonade" with a real lemon sitting on top!
I love the lemon story marikay.
Thank you both, the reminders to make the best of what we are experiencing when it isn't what we want, is timely~
Cheryl
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap121220.html
Marikay, that is too funny.
Petey. I'll bet they did. They were cured by a meteor.
queenjuj, don't give up. Find something that Afib can't take from you and you will claim a victory. Every victory helps.
Carol, yes and thanks. I've never produced an image that I feel is worthy of APOD but I sure wish I could. Many more dollars would need to be spent to get the equipment needed for images like the ones seen there.
Steve
To better suggest a starter set it would be helpful to know your budget and which objects in the night sky are that you are most interested in imaging. Unfortunately there's no single telescope that will be the right tool for the wide variety of objects out there. Planetary photography requires a lot of magnification (focal length). Nebula and galaxies vary in scale but most are very dim and benefit from wider aperture (tube/optics diameter). It's not mandatory to have greater aperture but wider means more/faster light gathering capability. Smaller apertures work as well but longer exposures are required to gather the same amount of light gathered by a wider aperture scope. I know that's a lot to digest but it's important to keep these things in mind when choosing a telescope. As I mentioned, when photographing the planets you'll need a lot of magnification to help with scale but aperture(tube/optics diameter) isn't a critical component since most are fairly bright.
For deep sky photography of nebula the most important piece of equipment is the tracking mount. A beginner mount will start at around $600. A decent telescope to add to that will likely cost around $800The design to look for is a German equatorial mount. You can see that this isn't exactly a cheap hobby but if I haven't made you run in the other direction yet let me know. With some more info from you I can go further into details and suggest options. For instance you don't have to use a telescope on your tracking mount, you could mount a camera and lens on it and take long exposures with much wider views. One other thing to keep in mind is whether or not you have excess light pollution where you live. For long exposure work you'll want skies as dark as possible. I travel about 45 minutes away to get to darker skies.
Here are a few photos of my set up. I can use both the refractor telescope (top) and reflector (larger scope) in tandem or individually.
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y67/Nighthd/Astrophotography/Astro%20Equipment/Gear%202/vix90a.jpg~original
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y67/Nighthd/Astrophotography/Astro%20Equipment/Gear%202/viv90b.jpg~original
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y67/Nighthd/Astrophotography/Astro%20Equipment/Gear%202/tak90-1.jpg~original
Steve
petey
My mount and scopes are fairly costly but they're more in the advance category as far as quality. As I mentioned the scope tracking mount is the most important part of an astrophotography rig. The more robust/sturdy and accurate they are, the more costly they are.
Most galaxies are very distant which means they're small in scale from Earth, with the exception of Andromeda. Most astrophotographers will use very high focal lengths and large aperture scopes to go after galaxies. It takes a lot of long exposures to get the total time needed to resolve the structure within galaxies. This is where a quality mount really pays off. A more sturdy and accurate mount can track more accurately and do so when supporting the increased weight of a larger scope.
Deep sky work also requires learning how to process the images you take over the course of a night. You'll need a computer program that will automatically stack the multiple exposures taken, This process is how you "stack" or combine your exposures which increase the data to produce the final image. If you look at my photo of The Heart Nebula, that's 75, 4-minute exposures stacked. To finish the stacked image it's best to use Photoshop to bring out as much detail as possible.
It's hard to experience anything more ancient than light that's been hurling through space for tens of thousands of years. We can conceivably be photographing something that has been changed or has vanished long ago. There is equipment used by the pros(NASA, etc.) that can give us more immediate info but when it comes to photons the laws of physics apply. Light travels at 186,000 miles per second which equals about 6 trillion miles per year. One light = 6 trillion miles. Multiple that by say 3,000 or more and the zeros really start pile up.