Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- Part I First discoveries: the adventure begins
- Part 2 Solar system voyages
- Part 3 A deep-sky guide
- Part 4 The night sky on film: astrophotography
- Part 5 Amateur astronomy in the electronic age
- Part 6 The build-it-yourself astronomer
- Appendices
- Epilogue
- Bibliography
- Index
Part 4 - The night sky on film: astrophotography
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- Part I First discoveries: the adventure begins
- Part 2 Solar system voyages
- Part 3 A deep-sky guide
- Part 4 The night sky on film: astrophotography
- Part 5 Amateur astronomy in the electronic age
- Part 6 The build-it-yourself astronomer
- Appendices
- Epilogue
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
What is involved: an overview
Ever since people first gazed upward into the night sky, they have desired to record what they have seen. Astrophotography is the art of photographing those celestial objects.
Evidence of early interest are the dots chipped into the walls of caves by Neanderthal man to record the Sun, Moon and stars. Today we send rockets high into the atmosphere, and even spacecraft above it, to photograph the heavens.
Now that reasonably priced single-lens-reflex cameras, fast films and good commercially built telescopes are available, astrophotography is within reach of any amateur astronomer.
We shall start with the simple camera and tripod set-up for the beginner, and then deal with time exposures, eyepiece projection and, for the more advanced, the art of guided deep-sky photography with a 500 mm telescope and dry-gas cold camera. The subject matter for such photography is virtually endless, and each object takes on a new look when photographed at a larger aperture, or with longer exposure in the case of deep-sky objects.
As a beginner, I set out to map the sky with nothing more than a camera and tripod, and then went on eventually to photograph with my guided telescope all of Charles Messier's 110 deep-sky objects. These include beautiful nebulae, galaxies and star-clusters.
Nowadays, the rims of lunar craters can be photographed with eyepiece projection, and the belts and swirls in Jupiter's atmosphere, as well as Saturn's rings, can be recorded as part of your observations.
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- Information
- The Guide to Amateur Astronomy , pp. 189 - 246Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995