Astrophotography is Easy!: Basics for Beginners (The Patrick Moore Practical Astronomy Series) PDF
Preview Astrophotography is Easy!: Basics for Beginners (The Patrick Moore Practical Astronomy Series)
Gregory I. Redfern Astrophotography is Easy! Basics for Beginners The Patrick Moore The Patrick Moore Practical Astronomy Series Series Editor Gerald R. Hubbell Mark Slade Remote Observatory, Locust Grove, VA, USA More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/3192 Astrophotography is Easy! Basics for Beginners Gregory I. Redfern Gregory I. Redfern Ruckersville, VA, USA ISSN 1431-9756 ISSN 2197-6562 (electronic) The Patrick Moore Practical Astronomy Series ISBN 978-3-030-45942-0 ISBN 978-3-030-45943-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45943-7 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland For Clara May the sky always remind you of me Foreword Dr. Richard Tresch Fienberg is Press Officer of the American Astronomical Society and former Editor in Chief of Sky & Telescope magazine. The International Astronomical Union has named asteroid 9983 Rickfienberg in his honor. Though trained as a professional astronomer, Rick remains an amateur at heart, observing the sky and taking astrophotos from his hilltop observatory in central New Hampshire. About 15 years ago, while I was working at Sky & Telescope magazine, I was invited to speak at an amateur astronomy convention on any topic of my choosing. I had recently resumed taking astronomical pictures thanks to the invention of consumer digital cameras and decided that astrophotogra- phy would make a fine topic for two reasons. First, as editor of a monthly astronomy magazine, I was inundated by submissions of astro-images from our readers, some of whom were among the most talented practitioners of the art. So I had plenty of material to mine for illustrations. Second, I was really excited by the astrophotos I was shooting myself with digital cam- eras, sometimes through lenses and sometimes through telescopes. This meant I actually knew something about the subject! I entitled my talk “Anyone Can Take a Decent Astrophoto” and used my own experience as a newbie sky-shooter to prove my point. I wrote that I “resumed taking astronomical pictures” because I had tried capturing images of celestial objects many times over my decades in astron- omy but had always given up. It was just too difficult with film cameras. There was no way to tell while out under the stars if you were doing a good job of focusing, tracking your target as Earth turned, and choosing the right vii viii Foreword exposure times. You had to wait ‘til your prints or slides came back from your local camera shop or drugstore to know how you did. And if the results weren’t to your liking — as they rarely were for me — you had to start over and go through the whole process again, and perhaps again and again. I simply didn’t have the patience for it. With digital cameras, though, you see your images as soon as you shoot them. If the focus or framing isn’t perfect, you make the necessary adjust- ment, shoot again, examine the result, and repeat till you’re happy — all within just a few minutes. And the sensors in digital cameras and built into smartphones are much more sensitive than film, making it possible to shoot attractive wide-field photos of the night sky capturing constellations and the Milky Way with your camera on a fixed tripod rather than a motorized tracking mount. Not just easy, but very satisfying! As you work your way up the learning curve and get more ambitious, there’s no shortage of computerized telescopes and electronic accessories to make things easy and virtually guarantee a successful outcome. And the image-processing software available today makes turning even a modest astrophoto into something truly stunning — perhaps even worthy of publi- cation in a magazine like Sky & Telescope. This is truly a golden age of astrophotography. Of course, whenever you try something new, you face an inevitable period of trial and error. In my case, it was often more error than trial. I’d have been very grateful for a book like Greg Redfern’s when I was starting out shooting the sky. Greg, whom I’ve known for a long time and whose talents are well known among astronomers and astrophotographers, is a ter- rific guide. His advice is accurate, sensible, and grounded in his own exten- sive experience. As a bonus, you’ll also get advice from several other leading astro-imagers whom Greg has invited to weigh in on specific topics of particular interest. With this book as a road map, anyone can do more than just take a decent astrophoto: anyone can take many really good astrophotos and enjoy a life- time of celestial exploration! American Astronomical Society Richard Tresch Fienberg Washington, DC, USA Preface A half-century ago there were no books that I could find in the library on astrophotography, so I basically learned by doing, with a lot of errors along the way. As a teenager who grew up in the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo era, I took my first astropic of the Moon using my Edmund Scientific 6-inch f/8 Newtonian reflector on an equatorial mount with a Praktika FX 35-mm camera body with no lens. I took a “prime focus” image – putting the cam- era body with an adapter into the telescope’s eyepiece holder – using Kodak’s fine grain 200 ASA “Plus-X” 35-mm film. There was a bracket on the telescope that held an aluminum pole that allowed for safely projecting white light views of the Sun onto a white metal plate to view. This bracket could also be used as a holder to place the camera very close to the eyepiece for “afocal” shots, using the camera’s lens to focus on the image in the eye- piece, of the Moon and planets. For “eyepiece projection” shots, I used an eyepiece in a holder mated to a camera body placed in the eyepiece focuser to get a shot. I had three basic eyepieces of one inch, half of an inch, and quarter of an inch focal length with a 2x Barlow, an optical accessory that increases eyepiece magnification. I had built a small darkroom in the family garage so I could develop my own black and white film. I eventually also added Kodak High Speed Ektachrome – 400 ASA – to my film processing capabilities. When the ultra-fast (for the day) Tri-X 400 ASA black-and-white film came out, I bought it in bulk rolls so I could make my own 36-exposure rolls. The bulk film roll went into a film cassette loader, and you would turn a crank so many times for so many exposures to be loaded into the 35-mm film ix x Preface cassette. You had to place the film loader and the reusable film cassette in a lightproof changing bag, feel your way (not on the film emulsion side!) through the loading process on to a film spool. The end had to be secured with tape, and you had to make sure the reusable film cassette top was securely snapped in place and light tight. This took some practice to get right, believe me! Once the film to be used was loaded in the camera, it then became a mat- ter of getting everything right for telescope-camera and the astronomical object being photographed. I shot mostly lunar astropics, along with some planetary images (I did not have a camera lens so for a while did not have Camera Only capabilities). I couldn’t afford one after buying all of the other equipment. I manually kept a photo log book recording each astropic’s details and commentary on how it turned out. I still have the log books, After the last exposure on the roll was taken, it then became a matter of properly developing the film and seeing how the resulting negative images turned out. I had an enlarger so I could make prints of my astropics. I even- tually sold the photo gear, telescope and enlarger but I still have the Praktika camera body, enlarger lens and some of my negatives and prints. They weren’t the greatest astropics, but they were mine and done lovingly from start to finish. I finally got (and still have) a camera lens – a Vivitar 135-mm f/2.8 – so I could initially take High Speed Ektachrome color slides off the family TV set to personally record the missions of Apollo 8 and 11. I still have those slides, TV cycle lines and all. Fig. P.1. View of the Moon from Apollo 8 TV image, December 25, 1968 (Image by the author.) Preface xi In 1974 I bought a Minolta SRT-101 35-mm film camera with a 50-mm f/1.2 lens at the San Diego Navy Exchange, which I still have. I took thou- sands of land, sea and some sky pics with that camera while on active duty with the U. S. Navy. I didn’t take astropics in Camera and Telescope mode with it until I acquired an 8-inch f/10 Criterion Dynascope Schmidt Cassegrain Telescope (SCT) in 1980 after selling the 6-inch. I had finally acquired my first books on astrophotography in 1979 to help out my prog- ress and kept adding to my library over the years. I used the various Kodak and Agfa black-and-white and color films avail- able and used commercial film processing. Lunar and planetary were my mainstays in astropics. I took mostly Camera and Telescope with a few Camera Only astropics. These two astrophotography modes are a continu- ing theme throughout the book and refer to the two separate means by which astropics can be taken. I had more time to take astropics while on Adak Island in the Alaskan Aleutians, but with only three days of sunshine a year, sessions were far and few! Fig. P.2. Getting ready for a rare clear day and night. Author’s telescope on Adak Island, Alaska, 1984. (Image by the Author) I think I can lay claim to being the only human being to ever photograph Halley’s Comet from Adak, Alaska. I did so in between snowstorms in 1985. Not much to look at on the slide, but it is there!
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