Astrophotography Gallery
These photos were taken and processed by myself and my class, Astrophotography & Dark Skies (AST 200). We developed technical skills in nighttime observations and used DSLR cameras to take a variety of astro-photos. For more information about specs or resources, visit our class website.
Collage Description:
Top left: this was a self portrait nightscape (landscape + nighttime) photo from our class field trip to Cummington, MA. We stayed until midnight taking photos of deep sky objects (galaxies and star clusters), nightscapes, and observing the beautiful dark sky. Still, despite driving out to what felt like the middle of nowhere, there was sky glow from nearby cities that made our pictures look like they were taken at sunset - this picture was taken after 10 PM!
Top right: Deep sky image of M42, or the Orion Nebula.
Middle: The moon, taken in prime focus (the camera was placed directly at the focal point of the telescope’s lens).
Bottom left: Deep sky image of M101, or the Pinwheel Galaxy.
Bottom right: Nightscape of my Astronomy & Public Policy (AST 214) class project - field trip to Macleish to talk about the importance of darkness at night, plus s’mores.
I took these two with my phone through eyepieces at the astronomy department’s star parties, which we try to host every month or so (free and open to the public!). We observe a variety of objects, usually with three different telescope mounts. These two were through our eight-inch (Moon) and twelve-inch (Jupiter) telescopes.
I took this image using eyepiece projection, which is a different technique than prime focus (featured in the collage). Eyepiece projection requires an eyepiece in between the camera and the telescope, which acts as a projection lens and magnifies the image. This was a particularly windy night, which meant the seeing (atmospheric “wigging”) was very bad. Eyepiece projection requires a longer exposure time, so the images didn’t turn out great - we took a video instead, and used a computer program to select the best individual frames.
By Bella Bandura
