Firstly, we need to discuss what is astrophotography! Sounds simple enough, astrophotography is taking photos of stars, planets, galaxies and nebulae. But the problem is that in the not so distant past, astrophotography was anything but simple!
Astrophotography used to be only for the experts
Back in the days of Kodak film, astrophotography was a specialist field of photography. Because it required expensive and specialized telescopes and other equipment. It was a hobby that vaguely caught the interest of some amateur astronomers. It was also a field of interest for photographers who like to dabble with photos of stars. But no matter whether you had a high power telescope, or a high quality camera, trying to make them compatible was very difficult. And trying to get high quality photography of the stars was also very difficult. In fact astrophotography used to be a professional pursuit, best left for the experts.
Do you need the best telescope for astrophotography?
These days, astrophotography has become a whole lot more simple due to advances in digital photography. With a little assistance from some high powered computational programs, and a little bit of experience, anyone can take brilliant photographs of the constellations. Better still, you don’t have to go out and purchase expensive equipment. Whilst that may come as a surprise to some, you don’t need to buy the best telescope for astrophotography. Of course, it helps to be able to study the stellar object that you wish to take a photograph of. But you don’t rely on the best telescope with super powers of magnification to do the work for you.
Astrophotography no longer light years away thanks to advances in technology
All you need for taking excellent photos of deep space objects is a telescope for beginners. You only need a telescope with enough magnification to be able to locate the object and a digital camera on a tripod. But none of these items needs to be expensive. All you need to do is take a number of short exposure shots with the digital camera on zoom, and no special lens is required. Depending on the object you wish to capture, you may need a guide to the night sky or some other method to identify the target. But no other specialist equipment is required.
Download the images to your computer and let the software do the rest
Initially you may be a little discouraged because there is not much to see, depending on the brightness of the object. In fact, sometimes there is not much you can even see in the sky while you are taking the photos. But you will need to trust the process, and keep the telescope focused on the target so you can check that you have the correct sighting. These simple tips can take the guess work out of it, and you will be surprised how easy these object are to photograph. But when the images are all downloaded, you may need to do a little research on YouTube, because there are a lot of instructional videos to assist with the process.
Choose a suitable processor to create the image
You do need a computer with a little computational power to do the work. Simple download the digital images onto the computer, and choose the image processor that you want to use. There are many software options to choose from, but one suitable image processor is “DeepSkyStacker”. The image processor takes the multitude of digital sky photos and performs the magic to create a single high resolution image. With a little experience, this process will be a produce an enhanced image of your chosen subject, which may have originally come from an unrecognizable dark patch in the sky.
Astrophotography is not expensive
The secret to astrophotography is the collection of numerous images. As with any telescope, it is the amount of light which is magnified by the optics inside the tube that produces an image at the lens. Similarly with the astrophotography technique, numerous digital images allow for a collection of more light from the distant object. When numerous images are processed into a single image, the image intensity is magnified, rather than using magnification of a single image.
Try astrophotography today!
If you are willing to learn and experiment, the results of astrophotography can be extremely rewarding. Although it sounds a little complicated, the principles are the same as when you go looking to buy a telescope. The more light you get from an images, or the more photos you collect from the image provides a better view of the object. The further away from Earth, the less light that we receive from deep space objects. But that is what makes astrophotography more exciting! Because it is a way of studying distant objects without requiring a larger telescope.
But above all else, when you buy a telescope – have fun!
