At my level, I prefer to think of Astrophotography as "Astronomy with a Camera". I am definitely not into producing Hubble-esque images. I have neither the time, the money or the location to spend hours and hours imaging one object. There is so much more I would like to observe.
For me, "Astronomy with a Camera" is about enhancing my own experience of the night sky, to pick out the detail that I can't quite manage with my aging eyesight and to keep a record of things that have caught my attention.
I recently gave a talk on Basic Astrophotography ("Astronomy with a Camera") at my local club (South Cheshire Astronomical Society - SCASTRO) on getting started using basic consumer cameras - Smartphones, Compact Cameras and Digital SLR Cameras - with some hints and tips based on my own experience. It was while I was giving this talk that I realised that I hadn't used a dSLR for Astronomy for many years. I thought it would be interesting to step back and try again.
One image that I did take many years ago (about 2010) with a dSLR was the Pleiades - M45 - which just showed the beautiful blue reflection nebulae.
(2010 - SkyWatcher 200mm F5 Reflector, EQ5 mount Konica Minolta 7D dSLR)
I wanted to try and recreate that image and if possible, improve on it. So for the past month or so, I have spent about 3 hours imaging and so far have not succeeded due to persistent high level cloud (and resultant sky glow) on the few nights that have apparently been clear. Hey, ho the joy of Astronomy in the UK.
However a couple of other targets have been fairly successful. All imaged using the same SkyWatcher 200mm Reflector and either a Canon 350D or a more modern Sony Alpha 58.
Firstly, the stunning Double Cluster in Perseus - officially NGC869 (left) and NGC844 (right). I like clusters.
(20250307 - SkyWatcher 200mm F5 Reflector, EQG mount Canon 350D dSLR)
I was quite pleased with that image, it's not stacked but has been tweaked very slightly in Registax to darken the sky and bring out a little bit more star detail. Camera was a Canon 350D
The next image was Messier M3, taken with a Sony Alpha 58. This took a couple of attempts. Although I couldn't actually see the cluster in the 'Live' viewfinder, pre-focussing and centring the object visually made this 3rd attempt fairly easy. Stacked from 10 images of 30 seconds exposure each and tweaked very slightly using Registax,
(20250324 - SkyWatcher 200mm F5 Reflector, EQG mount Alpha 58 dSLR)
The image has been cropped slightly.
Finally, Messier M81 in Ursa Major. At 12 Million Light years distance, I didn't expect very much:
(20250324 - SkyWatcher 200mm F5 Reflector, EQG mount Alpha 58 dSLR)
A little bit of detail lost while compressing from png (16 bit) to jpg (8 bit) format but what really surprised (and delighted) me is that the arms of this face-on galaxy are actually visible. This was a stack of about 30 exposures, each of 30 second duration - a total of 15 minutes exposure time.
I don't have a proper OSC (One Shot Colour) Deep Space Camera, this little experiment has proved to me that for the brighter Deep Space targets, a dSLR can be a very worthwhile tool in the Amateur Astronomers arsenal. More experimentation to come, I think.