Astrophotography encompasses a very wide range of imaging from taking pictures of our own Moon and the Solar System to imaging Galaxies and Nebulae many thousands or millions of light years away and which are normally termed ‘Deep Sky Objects’. All my pictures on the following pages are 'Deep Sky' objects grouped as Galaxies, Nebulae and Star Clusters. 

 

The hobby began for me a number of years ago when a local professional photographer and video producer, Graham Moore, ran an evening course entitled ‘The extremes of photography’ discussing macro photography and astrophotography. During the course he took the class outside and demonstrated that with amateur equipment you could actually see the outline of Saturn and its' rings. Up until that time I had no idea that it was possible to see Saturn let alone take pictures of the planet. I was hooked from that point onwards.

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That said, it soon became blindingly obvious that there are a number of disadvantages in pursuing this hobby:

                Antisocial hours. You normally can’t take pictures of stars in the daytime!

                It’s really an Autumn, Winter and Spring activity. Hours of darkness are limited in the Summer.

                Being outside in the winter is often very cold, wet or both!

                As skills develop it can become very expensive.

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And if that wasn't enough astrophotography is not just a matter of finding the object and pressing the camera shutter button. Light from the deep sky objects left those objects, in many cases, before the Dinosaurs roamed the earth. This requires lots of exposures over a period of hours to capture the data (photons of light) needed to form an image. I typically took a varying number of 300 second exposures over 1-3 hours to produce each image on the following pages. Once the data has been obtained a certain amount of computer processing needs to take place to produce the end result.    

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YES ITS' CHALLENGING BUT THE SATISFACTION IN PRODUCING A PICTURE OF A GALAXY MILLIONS OF LIGHT YEARS FROM EARTH IS UNBELIEVABLE!

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ITS' A STEEP LEARNING CURVE AND I AM STILL CLIMBING IT BUT IF I CAN DO IT  ........

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If anyone fancies a shot at taking pictures of the heavens my recommendation would be to visit the local astronomy group or society to see for yourself what is involved. Members are usually delighted to welcome newcomers. 

There are also a number of astronomy magazines which include features on astrophotography, 'Astronomy Now' and 'The Sky at Night' are very popular as are Steve Richards' books 'Making Every Photon Count' and 'Dark Art or Magic Bullet' dealing with equipment and image processing respectively and well worth the investment for these primers.

And finally a word for First Light Optics who sponsor the internet forum 'Stargazers Lounge', this is well worth a visit for beginners.  

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John

  

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