Stargazing with a Digital Camera - DSLR - but careful your head doesn't explode.......

I was inspired last week to try out some stargazing with my camera after watching a BBC program on the night sky.  Now - you might think - "all a but nerdy, boring etc", but I tell you, something happened that made it brilliant (well for me anyway!)

When I've looked at the sky before I could vaguely work out some constellations of stars - The Great Bear, Orion's Belt etc.  I have looked at the stars with binoculars on a clear night, and you just see more white specs.  Not very interesting really.

Anyway - on the evening in question I got out my camera and set it up on my tripod.  I pointed it at a random part of the sky (that looked like the rest of the sky!)  I set the camera to a long exposure (I'll explain more details in a moment) and released the shutter.  I waited in the cold for about 15 seconds.  I just saw a load of extra specs on the shot viewed through the back of the camera.  Not very interesting, but quite cool.

I took a few more shots, and headed into the warm house to download them onto the Mac and check them out.

Have a look at the shot below - you will need to click through on these to see the larger images to allow you to get the detail:

Now tell me - can you see the "smudge" in the middle on the far left?  I thought that it looked a bit odd, and it got me thinking.  It looked a little bit like a "small" galaxy.  I'd see pictures of galaxies before - taken in brilliant resolution by Hubble etc, and I was convinced that this could be something similar.

I downloaded some free software from the internet called Stellarium, and entered my location, and checked on the sky map in the area I had taken my picture.  Sure enough - as I magnified in, I saw what I had hoped for.  By complete accident, I had taken a photograph of the Andromeda Galaxy Nebula.  A REAL LIFE GALAXY!  I was pleased as punch!

The following night, I wandered outside to take some more shots of "my" galaxy.  I found a place that was well sheltered from the local street lights, and set up for the shot.  I got this one.  A bit better and looking a bit more like a galaxy - it's in the middle of this one. :-)

Following the success of my Galaxy, I checked for other stuff that I might be able to capture.  There is a Nebula in the constallation of Orion.  If you can picture Orion's Belt his sword is just below to the left.  I trained my camera into the spot Stallaruim told me to find the nebula and took the following photograph.

Orion's Belt are the three stars at the top on a slant.  The sword of Orion is formed by the three stars underneath, the middle one is surrounded by a red halo.  That's the Orion Nebula.  A Nebula is a cloud of gas in space that is the birth place of stars.

To give you an idea of the size of these objects let me give you an idea of how fast the speed of light is.  Sorry if you know all this, but for completeness it puts the whole thing into context.

If you were travelling at the speed of light like superman (or woman) around the equator of the earth, you would travel around our planet 7 times in less than one second (at 671 million miles per hour.)

Now that's quick!  That's why the speed of light is used to measure large distances.  Given the previous fact, imagine (if you can) the distance that light would travel in 1 year.  A very long way.  That distance is 1 light year.

Now look again at the image above.  The red blob (Orion Nebula) measures 24 light years across!  Can you get your head round that!

Once you've imagined that - check this out - the Orion Nebula is located 1500 light years from Earth!  The Orion Nebula is still in our own galaxy.  There are an estimated 200 to 500 billion Galaxies in our universe!

The original image you saw of the Andromeda Galaxy is 2.5 million light years away from Earth!  Now that's a blummin' long way :-)

This means that we are looking at an image that is actually 2.5 Million years old - it's taken the light that long to get to us allowing us to see it.  In absolute "nowness", the galaxy may look entirely different.  We are looking into the past; 2.5 Million years into the past to be precise!

Check out his YouTube video - it is a great way of trying to fathom the fastness of space.

The Vastness of Space

Has your head exploded trying to comprehend all that?  Mine is fizzing a bit just writing it.

If you're still with me - great - if I've lost you - I'm sorry, but  I have loved seeing these images.  They mean so much more that I took the photographs myself with my trusty DSLR and a tripod.

There are many web sites going into great details on how to do this, but for the beginner - try this.

Download Stellarium from here

http://www.stellarium.org/

Enter your address details, and find some easy stars in the sky to get your position.  It helps if you know where North is.

Now type Andromeda into the Stellarium search engine.  Stellarium will show you where to look.  You won't see anything with the naked eye, but you'll know where it is.

Train your DSLR (on a tripod) onto the patch of sky you're interested in, and set your camera to a wide Aperture (e.g. F2.8), use Aperture Priority (usually the A on the setting wheel) and set your ISO to the highest setting you can.  Cover the lens with a piece of card when you depress the shutter release button, and remove it after you hear the click.  This prevents camera wobble from affecting your picture when pressing the button.

Wait patiently for the shutter to click back, then take some more.  Try changing the settings for different ISO settings etc.  Retire to the comfort of your home, download the pictures to your computer and see if you managed to take a picture of a galaxy, nebula or alien :-)

If you do - I'd love to see them.

Happy shooting.


Rich