FIRST "FIRST LIGHT" - I have had an interest in astronomy for as long as I can remember. I built my first telescope in high school.  My first scope started with a 50mm f/24 lens ( that is not f/2.4, it is f/24! ) from Edmund. I managed to find a length of aluminum tubing and an old binocular eyepiece and fit them together using tape and plumbing supplies. My "first light" experience was from my family's front lawn trying to find Saturn. The scope was on a cheap wooden tripod and eventually I found Saturn as a quick streak of light across the tiny field of view of my eyepiece.

Eventually I was able to find Saturn and to stop the scope from moving long enough to focus the image. What I saw was astonishing to a 17 year old kid...it was Saturn in all its glory! I will never forget that view...that moment when I visited Saturn for the first time. That experience changed me forever and to this day when I see Saturn I think of that summer night on the front lawn - with family  behind me lined up to look.

- Over the years I have dabbled in astronomy and astrophotography but the days of film astrophotography were slow and painful. I had to guide by hand and I could not see the images until I got the film to a developer and very carefully explained that the extremely thin images were worth printing and still got terrible results from professional machine developers.

This photo is of the Sagittarius region. It is taken with a Nikon film camera, hand guided, with a f/1.4 lens wide open. This image represented the best I could do at the time. This was taken in 1989 in the high desert of California on a very cold night. Each photo is a single exposure and usually exposed for about 20 minutes on ASA 800 Fuji film.

Guiding was by the use of a guide scope through which I tracked a guide star by hand using a 4 direction pad controlling the scope and piggyback camera arrangement.

This image looks good but it is very crude by today's standards. Stars in the corners are streaked as if the image is moving - which it is. I found that the camera rotated with respect to the guide scope causing the extreme corners to move in the image.

Each photo took hours to set up and expose. The process of aligning the guide scope, the telescope, and the camera was very time consuming. I could only take 4 images a night. Guiding was tedious. Each exposure took total concentration. And the guide process was not accurate depending on the focal length ratio between the camera and the guide scope. This is where I decided that guide scope should be 10 times the focal length of the camera thus making the guide error one tenth of the camera error.

Image processing consisted of scanning a single developed negative. Transferring it to a crude program called Photoshop and hoping for the best.

In the mid nineties I bought an Astrophysics AP155. It was after the first look through the AP that I realized why I did not like the Celestron C-8. It was also the moment I realized I was doomed to spend a lot of money on astrophotography.

I made my first guided photos with the ST4 and the AP. The scope was wonderful but The photos were still a fair amount of work. Trying to find the guide star on the tiny ST4 CCD was a major undertaking.  I gave up on ST4 CCD photography because of the technical time of setup and the expense of the new SBIG 500 x 700 super camera.

This image of Orion was ST4 guided and exposed for 20 minutes using a camera with a 200 mm lens piggy-back on the AP 155 scope.

The quality of this image was ok for the time but not good enough for me. I knew that lenses of the 90s were better than this image. Too much time was being lost in the technical process of photography. For every 1 minute I was looking up, I spent 15 minutes looking down setting up equipment!

This change has brought astrophotography back into my life. For the modest cost of $400 for an eBay used camera I now have an excellent 6 mega pixel CCD system. I also bought a simple Philips ToUcam and I have adapted it with the help of PHD guide software into a reliable and simple guide system. Thank you Craig Stark!!!

I have returned astrophotography and for the first time I am spending more time on astronomy and less on setup.

A Quick Note On Camera Modifications For Astrophotography

I tried the Fuji S3 and the Nikon D300 in astrophotography. I actually converted an old Fuji S3 and still got marginal H-alpha results. After taking the Canon 20D and Fuji S3 apart I found a world of difference in the noise shielding. The Canon 20D has a far better shielding design. While I did not take my Nikon D300 apart, my personal testing at all ISO settings indicated that the Nikon was noisier than the Canon 20D. For astrophotography I am a total convert to the Canon camera design, engineering, and assembly. But I am a "nikonian" in standard photography and have been for years.

For anyone who is thinking of modifying their own camera it should be said that the modification is possible but complex. The other problem with this mod is trying to keep the new glass filter and CCD clean during the modification. This is an extremely important consideration. When I installed the filter I was fanatic about working in as clean an area as possible and covering the CCD during surgery at all times. A true clean room is a better solution but not possible if you have a dog like a Golden Retriever who is there to help. A single tiny particle on the glass or CCD will show up as a vague black spot on every photo. And if the particle is between the glass filter and the CCD the only solution is to take the camera apart again, clean every optical part, reassemble the camera, and try again.

Canned dry "air" is essential - but some gasses leave a residue if you tilt the can so that liquid hits the area you are cleaning. This is particularly likely if you are cleaning the CCD in the Camera. The residue must then be cleaned off the glass with a solvent and optical wipes and then the particles blown away again.

I used a clear glass filter over my first Canon 20D. The clear glass allows me to photograph in the infrared region if I choose to do so. But, if I want to cut off infrared above 700 microns I must use a infrared cutoff filter on any scope or lens in front of the CCD. The Tiffen Hot Mirror works well for this application but must be put on every lens as a filter.

On my second Canon 20D, I used a Baader Planetarium pre-sized infrared cutoff filter. It is an excellent filter and available at a reasonable cost. The Baader filter eliminates the use of an IR cutoff filter on every lens and reduces the extra glass in front of the CCD. I found that some filters cause reflections on the image.

I bought my Canon 20D filter listed here as - "Imaging Filters, Canon EOS DSLR Filters" :

 http://www.alpineastro.com/filters/filters.htm#DSLR%20Filters

The is an excellent filter and is an exact replacement, in size, for the Canon filter. I strongly recommend this solution over trying to buy optical glass from Edmond and cutting it yourself. Cutting your own filer is simply not worth the effort!!! Cutting and then trying to clean the cut piece is more difficult than it sounds and I have good equipment to do the work.

Back to Website Contents

ASTROPHOTOGRAPHS - I have always had an interest in wide angle photography of stars so most of my photography is biased in that direction. I tend to enjoy the wide view of astronomy. My astro work seems to show that bias. I look at a photograph an aesthetic as much as a technical event. I like to present an image in astronomy from the angle I think is best rather than the view we might have here on earth...or our view of the sky. As an example I like to look at the California Nebula as a cloud we are approaching rather than the vertical view we see from a standing position looking up.

Astrophotography is a dynamic process. It probably is changing faster then any technology I know.  I am just now developing images that I am satisfied with. But it will probably be that the very images I like now will soon be old or crude or I will have a better version. And I hope the process does continue to develop and improve...that would be exciting!

Cygnus

COMMENTS: This is Cygnus and the North America Nebula! I always photograph this and it has become my test and standard of quality. The Nikon lens continues to amaze me. The clarity and color correction is perfect. I am pleased with this image. It represents a giant change in technology, an improvement in my photography, and a place of beauty to visit in the night sky. You can now see the extreme difference in quality between my Sagittarius photo above and this photo and even more so in the composite below. There is no more than 3 percent cropping to the edges of this image.
                                                                  

DETAILS

Canon 20D Modified 
800
6 images at 5 minutes each
Nikon 80-200mm ED zoom f/2.8 @135mm F/4
Tiffen Hot Mirror, IDAS (light pollution reduction)
DeepSkyTracker, Adobe Photoshop CS3, Adobe Lightroom
Large metro area - near San Francisco (moderate to heavy light pollution)
65 degrees F

Notes:
The Tiffen Hot Mirror allows H alpha and near infrared to 700nm.

 Pelican Nebula - Cygnus - NEW IMAGE

COMMENTS: This is a photo of the Pelican nebula in the Cygnus complex of nebulae. This is the small red area to the right of the North American Nebula ( just off the coast of Florida ) in the photo above taken with the more powerful APM scope.

(Click on the image for a larger image)

DETAILS

Canon 20D Modified 
800
10 images at 5 minutes each
APM /TMB 105/650 at f/6.3 telescope - TS optics flattener
IDAS (light pollution reduction)
DeepSkyTracker, Adobe Photoshop CS3, Adobe Lightroom
Large metro area - near San Francisco (moderate to heavy light pollution)
45 degrees F

Notes: This is a full frame image from the Canon 20D modified - this image is uncropped - the original image is 3072 x 2048 pixels.

This image was registered in DeepSkyStacker and then developed entirely within Photoshop using "add" functions such as "linear dodge" and "screen". This image was not processed with conventional "Average",  "Mean" or "Sigma" image processes. This is experimental.

 M 13 and NGC 6207 - NEW IMAGE

COMMENTS: This is one of my new images resulting from the year of work I have put into understanding focus and the use of new focus tools available.

(Click on the image for a larger image)

DETAILS

Canon 20D Modified 
800
6 images at 5 minutes each
APM /TMB  105/650 at f/6.3 telescope - TS optics flattener
IDAS (light pollution reduction)
DeepSkyTracker, Adobe Photoshop CS3, Adobe Lightroom
Large metro area - near San Francisco (moderate to heavy light pollution)
45 degrees F

Notes: This is a full frame image from the Canon 20D modified - this image is uncropped - the original image is 3072 x 2048 pixels.

This image was registered in DeepSkyStacker and then developed entirely within Photoshop using "add" functions such as "linear dodge" and "screen". This image was not processed with conventional "Average",  "Mean" or "Sigma" image processes. This is experimental.

             (Click on the image for a larger image)

Canon 20D Modified
800
1 (one) images for 8 minutes
Zeiss Planer 50mm f/1.7 @ F/4
Tiffen Hot Mirror
DeepSkyTracker, Adobe Photoshop CS3, Adobe Lightroom
Mono Lake CA, 7000 feet elevation, no light pollution
35 degrees F

Notes:
- The Tiffen Hot Mirror allows H alpha and near infrared to 700nm.
- The star pattern for bright stars is caused by the shutter in the lens, they are not added for effect.

Canon 20D Modified
800
10  images for 8 minutes each
Questar 700, 90mm @ f/8
Tiffen Hot Mirror
DeepSkyTracker, Adobe Photoshop CS3, Adobe Lightroom
SF Bay Area
55 degrees F

Canon 20D Modified
800
8  images for 8 minutes each for composite of two images
Zeiss Planar 50mm f/1.7 @ F/4
Tiffen Hot Mirror
DeepSkyTracker, Adobe Photoshop CS3, Adobe Lightroom
Mono Lake CA, 7000 feet elevation
35 degrees F

Notes: This photo is about 4600 x 4600 pixels

Canon 20D Modified
800
12 images for 6 minutes each for composite of two images
APM 105/650 with TV .85x reducer/flattener
IDAS light pollution
DeepSkyTracker, Adobe Photoshop CS3, Adobe Lightroom
SF Bay Area
50 degrees F

Notes: Because the .85x flattener/reducer was used on the APM scope this photo is at - 105/522 mm @ f/5.3 - A very fast scope.

(Click on the image for a larger image)

Canon 20D Modified
800
4 images at 10 minutes each
Nikon 80-200 f/1.8 zoom  @200mm, F/4
IDAS light pollution
DeepSkyTracker, Adobe Photoshop CS3, Adobe Lightroom
Mono Lake
29 degrees F

Notes: There is a focus problem in the corners. This photo was taken at 3 AM and it was very cold so any image at the time was a good image. Warming up was becoming more important than good focus.