The Journey Begins
First Steps in Astrophotography
After spending years as a visual observer, when a global pandemic hit, there was suddenly time to give astrophotography a try. As luck would have it, Mars was at opposition in October of 2020. I purchased a simple monochrome guide camera and filter wheel.
I spent many hours under the skies taking pictures of planets over the next few years as Mars, Saturn, and Jupiter graced the skies. These planetary images were captured using my Meade 10" SCT. A 2X Barlow was used in conjunction with a RGB filters in a filter wheel. Finally, ZWO ASI120MM and ASI290MM monochrome cameras captured individual red, green, and blue images thru the filters.
Mars Opposition - October 2020
Jupiter - Saturn Conjunction - December 2020
Saturn Opposition - August 2022
Jupiter - August 2022
TIME TO GO DEEP
In 2022, after 2 years of planetary photography, it was time to try my hand at deep space objects. I already had a Canon 60D DSLR, so the next step was to get a small refractor that had a short enough focal length to frame many of the objects in the sky. I chose an Orion ED80T CF Triplet Apochromatic Refractor Telescope for it's compact size and good optics.
It was winter when I first pointing the Orion at the sky. The Orion nebula was an obvious first object.
Taking my first deep space image and learning how to process the images was a lot of fun and inspired me to image an object I had often chased in my visual observation days - The Horse Head Nebula.
As I pointed the scope at this object under Bortle 6 skies, I wasn't sure what I would see. My first test exposures revealed that something was indeed there.
I used an ultra high contrast light pollution filter to block out the city lights. About 1 hour of exposure was captured.
This photo was captured in late January 2022. I had a trip to a dark sky site planned in February, so this was a good test of my process.