Amateur Astrophotography

Patrick Frank speaking to William Herschel Society 5/12/2014 at BRLSI

Picture of Hersche Nebula looks much better with a modern digital camera on a smaller telescope, similarly with Orion Nebula.

Ideally use exposure time of an hour in total and at least several minutes to achieve this.

Examples of objects: Andromeda, Heart and Soul Nebula, Pheides, M3

Simple formula devised to maximise image quality:

Dark – from quantum temperature effects on CCD chip

Read – from CCD chip – determines exposure time

· Use multiple exposures and integrate to reduce other terms

Trick

· Use short exposures of a couple to a few minutes

· Align them

· Integrate

Lights - Normal photo x2 or so

Darks - with lens cap on to subtract “dark” effect of sensor from integrated image

Flats - use a uniform background such as a white T-shirt

Bias - rapidly taken darks with same ISO

“stretching” image – concentrated on lower end of spectrum to reduce noise to signal ratioe and increase contrast on interesting objects.

Not sure what this software package is called.

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