Astrophotography for Beginners

6-week course, February-March, 2012

Royal Observatory, Greenwich

Course Tutor: Dr Darren Baskill

   Over the last 15 years, a revolution has occurred in photography. Digital cameras, a technology originally developed purely for astronomy research in the 1970's & 80's, are now commonplace. Such cameras give users immediate feedback, resulting in a much more rapid learning curve. What used to take weeks of dedicated practice in order to get a good shot can now be done within an hour. As digital technology continues to rapidly improve, getting great photographs of the night sky has never been easier.

    During this course, participants will discover just what is needed - and just how easy it can be - to take great and original astronomy photographs. There are 6 evening dates during the course, and to make the most of a clear night, there may be some flexibility in the evening scheduling.

  The aim of the course is to teach participants the basic techniques required for astro-photography, and the course is run alongside our annual Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition at the Royal Observatory, which was initiated by Darren in late 2007 and began in 2009, the International Year of Astronomy.

 Darren has been taking astronomy photographs since 1995 when he was studying astrophysics at the University of Leicester. He began using the now old-fashioned technology of wet film and patience and is now stunned on a regular basis with the sensitivity of modern digital cameras.

Course notes

• Please bring any equipment you have if the weather forecast predicts a clear night!
• Please send your astrophotographs to the course tutor via email so that they can be displayed during the show of participants work in week 5.
• Please note that the PDF files are large and so may take a minute or two to open or download.
• All the photographs used in the course are Copyright Dr Darren Baskill, unless otherwise stated.
  
  

Week 1	Introduction & Basics [PDF] » Mobile, compact and DSLR camera's; camera settings including quality, exposure time, ISO, f-number
	Planetarium session » Issues unique to astrophotography, and we took a look at some of the winning photographs from the Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition.
Week 2	Wide angle astrophotography [PDF] » Looking at easy-to-take but stunning to look at wide angle photographs.
	Planetarium session » Telescopic sites in the planetarium.
Week 3	Practical session: Outside with zoom lenses and small telescopes » Making the most of a clear night, with Jupiter, Venus, the Moon and Mars.
Week 4	Sun & Moon [PDF] » Solar telescopes & filters; photographing the Moon; planning striking photographs using OS maps & Stellarium; many of the original, fun and inspiring photographs shown in this lecture are by Laurent Laveder.
	Processing software [PDF] » Demonstrations using IrfanView to try to correct for light pollution, Star Trails for stacking images, and Deep Sky Stacker to align and stack images. See also this 90 second tutorial. The PDF contains a brief list of useful software for Windows, Linux and Macs.
Week 5	Sights through a zoom lens, and telescopes [PDF] » What we can see through a zoom lens on a camera, and a telescope (which is just a big zoom lens!). Once we zoom in, we need to track the stars, and so here is a brief guide to telescopic and camera mounts.
	Participants photographs » We look at what students of the course have been looking at over the last few weeks - thanks everyone who submitted their excellent photos!
Week 6	Practical session with small telescopes » Spending the night with the 28" refractor, and outside getting practical experience using small telescopes.

A course summary is also available as a PDF document.

---