"If you wish to make an apple pie truly from scratch, you must first invent the universe."

— Carl Sagan

Saturn

Saturn

March 6, 2008

Interesting. How did you take this photo?

How did you get this photo? 

how I took the photo.

I held my pocket sized general purpose digicam up to the eyepiece of the telescope. the rim of my lens touched the rim of the eyepiece and I held them together with my thumb and finger.
My camera was in manual mode and I tried several shutter speeds up and down from what speed I used in first snap. I did this at a telescope night at MSU. Then I cropped the pic on my computer.
I don't think I did any further exposure adjustments on my computer. So you are looking at a single snapshot and not a stack. My computer should have the exact f stop and shutter speed and date record, if there was a reason for me to look it up and write it down. and I usually use ISO 400 if I'm in program or manual.
Sometimes I take a video and make stills from it. but this one I think was a snapshot. And I usually start with a faster shutter speed and try a few slower ones. It's interesting to see what details are captured at different exposure settings. and it's more difficult to capture brighter and darker objects at the same time with good details in all objects. or even one object will reveal different details at different exposure settings.