Budget Astrophotography: Imaging with Your DSLR or Webcam

257 Pages·2015·16.6 MB·English

by  Timothy J. Jensen (auth.)

Imaging with Your
DSLR or Webcam
The Patrick Moore Practical Astronomy Series
More information about this series at: h ttp://www.springer.com/series/3192

Budget
Astrophotography
Imaging with Your DSLR or Webcam
Timothy J. Jensen
Timothy J. Jensen
Mebane , NC , USA
ISSN 1431-9756 ISSN 2197-6562 (electronic)
ISBN 978-1-4939-1772-3 ISBN 978-1-4939-1773-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4939-1773-0
Springer New York Heidelberg Dordrecht London
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014948460
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Dedication
To my wife Mary…
For all her support and encouragement…
in all things…

Pref ace
A lmost everyone that has looked up at the night sky (with or without a telescope),
or at a photo taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, and has wondered what it would
be like to take a portrait of the stars of their own for all to see. Astrophotography is
almost as old as the invention of the camera itself. In 1840, John Drapper made the
first known astrophotograph. It took him 20 min to expose a metal photographic
sheet to produce an image of the Moon. Today’s cameras, especially digital single
lens reflex cameras (DSLRs) have radically changed the photography world, espe-
cially in the realm of astrophotography. Capable of high resolution with a wide
spectral response and large, sensitive detectors, today’s cameras can reproduce
Drapper’s extraordinary feat in as little as one two thousandths of a second… over
two million times faster!
T he digital photography revolution has changed the paradigm for astrophotog-
raphy as well. Hour-long exposures with an eye glued to a cross hair eyepiece are
a thing of the past. We can now record in minutes what took hours in the past with
film without the worry of reciprocity failure (the failure of film to respond to light
with increasing exposure time). Computer controlled guiding using a web cam and
lap top can completely automate the imaging process. All one needs is a small
computer and some software.1
B y learning a few simple techniques, a whole new photographic world can open
up before the lens of your DSLR. That lens can be anything from your standard issue
50 mm, to a 30″ telescope. What makes DSLRs so appealing to the budding amateur
astrophotographer is quite simply, price. These cameras are very modestly priced
1 Different software programs will be referred to throughout the course of this book. The author is
not affiliated with any software manufacturer, developer or distributor. If a specific software
package is mentioned, or used as an example, it reflects the author’s personal choice and should
not in any way be considered an endorsement.
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and for an investment of few hundred dollars (assuming you don’t already own one),
the wonders of the night sky are yours to explore and capture. Wonderful wide field
vistas full of star clouds, dust lanes and nebulae are just a few exposures away. With
a telescope, faint galaxies come into reach. You can explore the surfaces of the Moon
and Mars, follow the changing clouds of Jupiter and Venus, see spokes in the rings
of Saturn, study asteroid light curves, follow the decay of a supernova, measure the
elements in a star. All of these fascinating wonders are within your grasp.
There are a myriad of different types of digital cameras on the market today,
ranging from simple fixed lens point and shoot, to expensive professional level
single lens reflex models. This book will focus on astrophotography using moder-
ately priced digital single lens reflex (DSLR) style cameras as well as simple “web-
cam” style video cameras.
B oth Canon and Nikon have DSLRs that are suitable for astrophotography.
Though Canon is more popular in the DSLR astrophotography field. Which camera
is preferable is left to the reader’s personal bias.
D SLRs are not only good for taking stunning portraits. Real science can also be
accomplished with these cameras. I hope to introduce you to the world of astropho-
tography and touch on the both the art, and science, that can be accomplished by
the amateur astronomer using these cameras.
This book will provide an introduction to some of the basic theory as well as
some of the general techniques required to capture, process, and analyze astronomi-
cal images. With a little practice, you’ll soon be hanging eye catching images on
the wall for your friends to admire.
A word about software…
There are almost as many different software programs for amateur astronomers to
choose from as there are types of telescopes. In the DSLR astrophotography world,
a few stand out. Being a Windows person, I use Backyard EOS for DSLR camera
control and image capture, ImagesPlus for file conversion, calibration, stacking and
initial processing, and Photoshop for final processing. For webcam image process-
ing, Autostakker!2, AVIStack and VirtualDub are essential. I am most familiar with
these programs and will refer to their unique features along the way. Macintosh and
UNIX users may have different software needs and wants. It is left to the reader to
determine what software they prefer. When referring to software command paths,
italics will be used to define the path: d ropdown menu|submenu|command .
OK, let’s get started…
Mebane, NC, USA Timothy J. Jensen
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my thanks and gratitude t o the people that helped make this
work possible through their conversations, suggestions, enthusiasm for astronomy
and of course, the use of their images…
(in no particular order):
Barry Clark
Mike Phillips
Paul Jones
Darryl Milika
Pat Nicholas
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