NGC1973-1975-1977, reflexion nebulae in Orion Astrophotography is a difficult art. The images you can see in illustrated books, or view on the web pages of high skilled amateurs, such as Philip Perkins, Robert Gendler, Ed Grafton, require a high accuracy technique and an expensive equipment, or a home-made, time consuming one, like Eric Royer's. Not to mention those realized through giant reflectors like Keck or the VLT, or those of the Hubble Space Telescope…

But it is still possible, with quite an unpretentious equipment, to take up this topic, provided you aim at reasonable goals and work carefully.

M42, the Orion great nebula Just a few years ago, only classical silver halide (film) photography was affordable to amateurs.
The low sensitivity of this media, and thus the necessary duration of exposures allowed to take photographs of deep sky objects only through photo lenses of various focal lenghts attached (piggyback) on the scope, or at the scope's prime focus, provided you could ensure a high accuracy guiding.

As for planetary images, the results were often disapointing, the image beeing too often blurred by turbulence...

M8, the lagoon nebula The availability of the new CCD i.e. charge couple device allowed the amateurs a considerable progress : in planetary imaging, webcams can acquire dozens or even hundreds of images of which only the best, having been shot through a "turbulence hole" are kept to be composited and build a higher grade image ; in deep sky imaging, specially fit CCD cameras can get in a few minutes images comparable to those which took hours to be shot with classical films...

I have tried all those different techniques and the images on this site illustrate the results I have achieved with them. On the long term, I have come to specialize, like most amateur astrophotographers. My favourite field is now deep sky objects CCD imaging : nebulae of all kinds, star clusters and galaxies.

The links of the navigation frame will lead you to these images. Please note that the ones called "new on the site" and "deep sky (CCD)" are my main activity. I don't shoot much planetary image any more, no more piggyback film image at all and very seldom moon or sun images. You can't grasp the whole thing !

It is thus by clicking on the link "new on the site" that you can see the best images as quality is supposed to grow with time...

Enjoy your visit !

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Who is Albireo 14 ? (in french)


Within 5 billions years, the Sun will become a red super giant star.
It will inflate to the orbit of Jupiter. The Earth will volatilize…
 

 

 

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