Astrophotography

I have been playing around with photography for a number of years, mainly concentrating on monochrome using film and traditional darkroom techniques. I moved into astrophotography a few years ago because astronomy has been a long term interest and I thought that astrophotography would be straightforward. Little did I realise it would be just about the most difficult thing I ever attempted. I started by trying to take sharp close ups of the Moon and eventually succeeded using 35mm and Kodak Technical Pan. I used a bird watching scope that gave about 2400mm at about f45 and at that magnification with the camera/scope held up on two tripods the Moon fairly galloped across the frame so it was all a bit tricky.

When I started in earnest I bought a telescope, a Meade LX200 10 inch and attached a film camera to the back. The results were indifferent to say the least, partly due to the mucky atmosphere, light pollution and too much magnification. Reciprocity failure and film that was insensitive to the useful parts of the spectrum didn’t help much. One night I played around with a web cam and the Moon and was staggered to see the amount of fine detail that could be captured in a short time. I had been using digital cameras for ordinary work so was not put off by ‘going digital’ with my astro work. Seeing the fruits of my labours on the lap top almost in real time was a further boost. Five telescopes and three cameras later and I am beginning to get the idea.

Astrophotography from England remains very challenging with the low altitude and poor weather. Setting up each time is very time consuming and often no sooner is it done than you have to pack up because the clouds came in. I built an observatory to make access to the sky easier as a permanent installation has advantages too numerous to mention. The following pages are a modest attempt to show some of the photographs I have taken of deep sky objects over the last couple of years. They mostly show nebulae, galaxies and star clusters. Captions and technical details are provided with each picture.

I have recently added some examples of how the pictures are processed using Adobe Photoshop. Also included at the end of this section are some tips on how to set up Photoshop so as to make it easier to use. Some parts of the site are still under construction and, as always, I am constantly trying to get better examples of the pictures already taken.

Astrophotography by Dennis Isaacs

Timmy

click on a picture to visit the different galleries