Astrophotos of the month
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The best of our readers’ astrophotography
Trevor Jones
Ontario, Canada
Telescope:
Explore Scientific ED80 refractor
“I have enjoyed many beautiful nights under the stars over the past six years. After joining the local astronomy club in my area, RASC Niagara, I learnt a lot about astrophotography in a short period of time. Whenever possible, I like to set up my telescope and take images of deep-sky objects to share on my astroimaging blog.
“My shot of the Andromeda Galaxy, also designated Messier 31, is one of my favourite images to date. I took this image at the CCCA Observatory in Wellandport, Ontario, under exceptionally clear skies
– it combines over three hours worth of four-minute exposures with a Canon 450D DSLR camera.”
Chris Grimmer
Norwich, UK
Telescope: Celestron C9.25 and William Optics GT-81 refractor
"My route into astrophotography started a couple of years back when, one night in my local pub, I discovered that the landlord’s son owned a telescope. So, in the early hours of the morning, we headed outside to the car park to observe the night sky.
“I soon paid a visit to my local astronomical society and, the following day, bought my first 'scope. I have always been interested in photography, so it wasn’t long before I had modified a cheap webcam and achieved my first image of Jupiter. It was then that the astronomy bug really hit. From that point onwards my kit became rapidly upgraded, to the point where not a month passed without something new being delivered to me.”
Paolo Porcellana
Castiglione, Italy
Telescope: 150 truss homemade
refractor
“When I finally saw through my new telescope after months of waiting, I couldn’t believe my eyes – the details and contrast in H-alpha were great and I enjoyed the view, forgetting to capture more images. The main active region visible that day was captured at a focal length of three metres (9.8 feet) using my homemade refractor and a PTG Chameleon Mono camera with a DayStar Quantum 0.5A filter.
“Thanks to the brightness of the prominence, I could also image details of the disc surface before splitting the post-processing elaboration to reach a comparable level of luminosity and contrast. I then added colour digitally.”
Andy Li
West Sussex, UK
Telescope:
127mm Sky-Watcher Maksutov-Cassegrain
“I live on the West Sussex Coast and was bitten by the astronomy bug about 12 months ago when my wife bought me a telescope for Christmas. I took these images through a 127mm Sky-Watcher instrument, which I have put onto a SkyProdigy alt-azimuth mount. The camera I used was a NexImage
1 that is essentially the same as a Phillips SPC900NC webcam. I used a 2x Barlow lens for the image of Jupiter where the Great Red Spot can be seen, as well as the large, Galilean moons Io and Ganymede.”