Rod's photos rekindled my interest in astronomy and now after 30 years I am taking up the hobby again. Things have changed alot since then, especially in the area of astrophotography. Back then, even with a high powered telescope, the learning curve for getting good pics of celestial objects were quite high. There was no such thing as digital cameras. You took a picture and did not know whether it would turn out or not. Since many of the objects required long exposures, star tracking etc.. I wasted many nights taking photos that amounted to nothing. The only decent pics I got were of the moon and a couple of bright planets.
Fast forward to the digital age and now things are much easier. Heck, you don't even need a telescope to photograph some of the larger dim objects in the sky. DSLRs give you instant feedback. Digital images can be processed with software to get you the results you need. As an example, the youtube video below describes a technique called stacking whereby multiple short exposures are taken of the same object and the pics are stacked with software.
The person in the video used a 280mm telephoto lens. The exposures were kept short (1.6 seconds) but he took a lot of them. Take a look at the results he got of the Andromeda galaxy. Incredible if you ask me. Basically just his DSLR and a tripod. No need to track the object because the exposures were short. Just fast forward to the end if you want to see his results without watching the rest of the video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0JSTF8SGi4
Author
Topic: Night sky (Read 4119 times)