Getting started on astrophotography
Ever since I was a child, I’ve been fascinated with all things related to space and star sky. When I was little, I often gazed to the sky, wondering about the overflying satellittes, shooting stars and other phenomena of the sky. Even though reading the fantastic Tähdet & Avaruus (Stars & Space) magazine published by Ursa, the Finnish astronomical association, has often made me consider reviving the hobby in a more serious fashino, in the end I just never end up getting outside to watch the stars.
In fact, long before I acquired a DSLR and got into photography, the fantastic images of deep space targets and wide field pictures of star fields published in Tähdet & Avaruus got me dreaming of starting astrophotography. Back then I didn’t even have a camera, much less a telescope. Now the situation is better in that I have a great camera and moving to countryside has reduced the light pollution tremendously. With the birth of our newborn baby, I’ve had ample time to browse the internet between the feedings and so I looked up the home page of Ursa (especially, the telescope sales section) and astronetti.com and ended up rekindling the interest for astronomy and astrophotography.
As a person drawn to all kinds of gadgetry, I quickly convinced myself that if I were to start astrophotography, I would need AT LEAST a tracking mount, and I got familiar with different kinds of mounts (alt-azimuth, equatorial) and piggyback shooting with them. As a house owner and the father of a new baby, common sense (FOR ONCE!) won and I releized that the most logical first step would be to learn to know the night sky without a telescope and maybe learn to shoot star trail pictures.
A good compromise, I found out, would be a barn door- tracking mount that can easily be built for cheap and that can be used for astrophotography with exposures up to several minutes. A lot smarter than starting to oogle at telescopes worth hundreds of euros. I also sent my application to join Ursa, and am now exploring the materials needed for building the barn door mount. So in the future, I will be blogging about my astronomy and astrophotography project from the point of view of a complete beginner in the subjects.
Sources:
