Astrophotography

Why I like a little Astrophotgraphy is largely down to one man. Dr Frank Andrews - an astronomer himself he had a professional post at Carter Observatory (which is now Space Place) as the Senior Scientific and Public Education Officer. There he gave a series of public talks, wrote news paper columns about the night sky, did news appearances for notable events like the Voyager 2 flyby of Neptune which both my brother and I really enjoyed.

He loved to show people the planets through the observatory telescopes, some of the constellations and the pretty astronomical objects like the Orion Nebula or the Jewel box Cluster. This instilled in me and many others a love for getting out and seeing the nightsky in all it’s splendor.

Chasing an Aurora, getting just sky glow and a galaxy and still happy.

First it was just shooting the vista of the sky and choosing a few constellations to try and capture. It lead to chasing for comets with my second comet finally having a proper visible tail.

Twilight sky with some stars and a comet.

Closer look at the comet.

If ever you need to put your problems into perspective a bit then getting out in the dark and seeing the scale of the universe is a great way to do this.

The Milky Way with the galactic kiwi showing up top slightly to the left.

Attaturk memorial under the galaxy.

It also doesn’t hurt that in getting out there by night you also get to see a bunch of other things, like epic foggy landscapes lit by moonlight.

Mystical moonlight and fog over Lake Ferry

So thanks Frank for giving me the impetus to get out there and see things like this. Most of this is fairly straightforward to do too.

Mostly you need just :-

• Camera

• Cable remote (or remote trigger like IR or over bluetooth)

• Tripod

• A dark location.

Use the rule of dividing 500 by the length of your lens in mm to give you a guide exposure time and get out composing shots.