For a long time IÂ haven been interested in night photography. This has included night shots in cities, and then I branched into shots of night sky. IÂ have now taken the next step, trying to learn a few things about astrophotography. It is a whole new world and a steep learning curve. One of the amazing things about astrophotography is that IÂ am now taking photos of things that we cannot see with our naked eye. The nebula and galaxies are simply not visible, and it takes effort to bring the photos to life.
First, the equipment. I mainly use the William Optics Zenithstar 73mm telescope, connected to the ZWO ASI294mc Pro astrophotography camera. These are mounted on the Sky Watcher HEQ5 Pro mount. And I use a William Optics 50mm guide telescope with the ZWO ASI 120mm mini guide camera. And all of this runs the ASI Air pro, which works well to connect everything and to manage stuff via an app from my iPhone. Just the equipment is an amazing set up.Â
Next, there is the phase to learn how to take the photos, how many to take, how long the exposure should be, what kind of gain one should use, and how to track all of this as the earth rotates. The digital camera saves files in a "fit" format. So, then there is the phase to figure out how to process the photos. I use a program called SiriL, which fortunately works on a Macintosh computer and also reads fit files. There's another part of the learning curve: stretching, calibrating, and getting the photos ready for editing.
And that is the final phase, learning how to edit the photographs. I mainly use Adobe Lightroom, Camera Raw, and Photoshop. And each of these has a learning curve, with specific tricks and procedures that apply to astrophotography, and which are fairly new to me too.
So, here's a photo of M42, the Orion Nebula. I took these shots from near Burnet, Texas. This is a stacked result of 30 images, each of which were shot at 120 seconds and with a gain of 120.Â
M42 Orion Nebula from near Burnet, Texas, zwo 294, Zenithstar 73, 120sec, Gain 120, 30 stacked images.