Australian Sky & Telescope

CHOOSING AN ASTROGRAPH

WHICH TELESCOPE SHOULD YOU CHOOSE for deep sky astrophotography? The abundance of choices in today’s market can be overwhelming, even for a technologically savvy person. Telescopes come in a great variety of optical designs, sizes and prices. A reasonable approach is to first decide what your goals are for your astrophotography. Are you intending to hunt for asteroids, comets, supernovae or otherwise contribute to science? Or is your goal to express your fascination with the universe by taking eye-catching astro-images?

Assuming the latter, that is, to photograph nebulae, galaxies and other deep sky objects (rather than the Sun, Moon and planets), your goal is thus to obtain the clearest and most detailed images of these objects.

In deep sky astrophotography under dark skies, we are limited by the amount of light we can collect on clear nights. That light is many orders of magnitude fainter than what’s available to a typical daytime photographer, and it potentially leads to a loss of fine detail and images that appear grainy. To overcome this problem,

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from Australian Sky & Telescope

Australian Sky & Telescope11 min read
DAWN Of The Milky Way
We live in a great galaxy, one that’s far larger and brighter than most others in the cosmos. Abounding with countless stars and surrounded by dozens of satellite galaxies, the Milky Way is a giant barred spiral with a dark matter halo spanning some
Australian Sky & Telescope3 min read
Long Time Coming
EXPLORING THE SOLAR SYSTEM is a long game, with travel times measured in years. And the time from when we first propose a mission to when our spacecraft sits on the launch pad, ready to leave Earth or die trying, is often much longer still. In a way,
Australian Sky & Telescope8 min read
One-dimensional Apodising Mask
Observers use aperture masks to improve the view through a telescope, particularly under unsteady seeing. Such masks tend to fall into one of three categories. The first is off-axis, or stop-down, masks. These reduce the aperture to minimise the blur

Related Books & Audiobooks