Welcome to the homepage of David Gloistein.
WhatsNew:
Observatory
November 2016
I have set up the observatory for group visits and can accomodate upto 10 people with ease.
I have had many groups from my local area visit the observatory and I enjoy being able to show people what is possible today as a amature astronomer and astrophotographer
Astrophotography:
News from my observatory
November 2016
I continue to work on a project with the AAS and produce photos for their database of rare objects.
Took part in another 2 day workshop with the developer of PixInsight, the specialist software I use for my photos.
In the past 12 months the weather was very poor and as a result I have had a go at socalled mood photos, these are landscapes including astronmical objects like the sun, moon or milkyway.
Visual astronomy:
What have I been looking at
November 2016
Over the past few years the weather seems to have gotten worse. None the less, when possible I try to use my dobson for visual observation.
Due to the long periods of inactivity I will try my hand at radioastronomy
Aim of this website:
The aim of this site is to make public some of my astrophotographs and to pass on some of my experiances during the first few years of taking astrophotos. It is aimed at people also beginning to work in this field and intended only to be a guide to getting to the end result faster with less problems.
Neu : Indexseite auf deutsch 
Also new : actual weather from Raßberg
CURRENT MOON
On this page :
New Photos
New Observatory
New goodies
Moody photos
New Photos
A couple of photos from the recent partial eclipse of the sun, taken at the Observatory in Steinberg, Graz ( my second observatory )
A test shot using my new TS 60 f5,5 APO with a Nikon D7000 piggy backed on my Orion Telescope
The new observatory has been up and running for a while now, and has loads of space to move about in. I have spent a lot of time accurately aligning everything and i am very happy with the results. Below are some photos from the past year, those taken using narrow band filters were in the winter, I am currently set up with LRGB ( normal colour ) filters
Supernova C/2013 J - photographed on 12/02/14 and compared to an older photo. I also viewed this SN through my dobson, it was the first one I had actualy seen with my own eyes.
The Elephant's Trunk Nebula with 6 hours exposure ( narrow band )
The Bubble Nebula ( narrow band )
The Veil Nebula ( narrow band )
The Pelican Nebula ( narrow band )
NGC2024 The Flame Nebula ( narrow band )
Sternwarte Raßberg II:
2012 was a very busy time for us, we had a total of 5 major building projects simultaneously ongoing. One of these was the building of my new observatory, Raßberg II. Due to the fact that the other projects were more important and had strict deadlines, the work on the observatory was carried out " in our spare time ".
Well, after lots of work, and a number of unforeseen setbacks, we finally finished the building in April 2013.
The new observatory is exactly as planned - it has lots of space to move about in, it is sited so that there are few problems with stray light, it is laid out so as to be efficient and easy to operate. As an astronomer I have seen a number of private observatories and I am really proud to say, that mine must be one of the best. Well, this statement is almost true - I recently was at a workshop where a collegue, who lives near Graz, told us about his new observatory. He built it in cooperation with 4 other astronomers and the astrophysics department of an american university. The observatory is at some 3000m altitude in the mountains of Chile and is remotely operated. If you wish to see what is possible, when one is at the top of the ladder, check out
www.chart32.de
Link to my gallery showing the building of the new observatory
Link to the story behind my new observatory
New Goodies :
I have upgraded my planetarium programm to SkySafari 5 Pro, this runs on my smartphone and can control my telescope. It has a database containing some 27 million stars to mag18, 740,000 galaxies and 620,000 solar system objects including every known asteroid and comet. In addition it has maps of the moon based on the most up to date hires NASA data. I now run this on an iPad Mini - it is terrific for working with my large dobson telescope. The new version 5 is even better, which was hard to believe, as version 4 was so good.
Moody photos
In the past year I have done more in the field of moody pictures here are some examples :
The Milky Way in Carinthia
Moonrise in Sankt Pankratzen
Star Trails from by terrace
The Milky Way at ITT2016 in Carinthia
The night sky at ITT2016 in Carinthia
The Milky Way in Sankt Pankratzen
A very complicated photograph - taken from a distance of 3 km using an 85mm lens. Due to the long focal length for such a shot, a robotic head was used to make a 42 tiled panorama. In order to avoid startrails the camera and robotichhead were all mounted on an astronomical mount. The resulting picture was nearly 500 MB. This one is a condensed version, in the full sized version, the church ( bottom right corner ) looks like this ...
