Kevin's Astronomy Images:

During the first three years of my astronomy hobby, I primarily observed through the eyepiece.  Then I took on the challenge of astrophotography.  I found that it was a very difficult to obtain deep sky images through the telescope optics.  So I focused (pardon the pun) on piggyback astrophotography where the camera uses a 50 millimeter (mm) to 200 mm lens and is mounted to the outside of the telescope.  This way the tracking errors are not as critical to the image as the telescope moves across the sky.

The first camera that I used was a fully manual Pentax K-1000 single lens reflex (SLR).  But it had its limitations, mainly that the focusing screen was not upgradable.  I then went to a Olympus OM-1 SLR, which I could replace the focusing screen to obtain precise focus of an image.  With both cameras I used 35 mm color slide and color print films which ranged anywhere from 100 ASA to 3200 ASA film speeds.  I used an off-axis guider unit between the camera and the telescope.  This off-axis guider allows the user to see a small area of the image with a small mirror directed to a guiding eyepiece. But I was required to hand guide the telescope with my eye on the eyepiece and my hand on a drive controller.  It was very boring to sit at the controls in the cold for one to two hours manually guiding the telescope.  It was really disappointing when the final images from the telescope and camera revealed that I wasn't a good guider.

But when I bought the Celestron C-11 telescope I learned more techniques to improve my images.  To learn more about my hardware and software check out the Equipment Page.

Below is a table of the type of objects that I have imaged or plan to image.  You can click on either of the first two columns to take you to that area.  And from there you can select individual objects which will give you more detailed information on how I imaged that object.

In the details sections though, the objects sky position is measured in right ascension (RA) and declination (DEC). RA is measured in hours, minutes and seconds from east to west. DEC is measured in degrees, minutes and seconds from north (+ ) to south (-).  Diameter of  my objects is measure mostly in minutes of arc across the sky. One degree has sixty minutes and each minute has sixty seconds of arc.  On earth we have longitude (East and West) and latitude (North and South) .  In the sky we use RA and DEC.  RA is the celestial equivalent of terrestrial longitude.  +90 degrees of DEC is where the north pole would extend out to space, like near the north star.  If our equator extended out to space that is 0 degrees DEC and the south pole extending out is -90 degrees DEC.  If you would like more information you can search the Internet for even more details or check out some of my book recommendation here: Books Page.  My goal is to give you a brief  description of the object, the equipment I used, the exposure(s) that were taken and when and where I imaged it.  Plus there are a few stories about my adventures taking these images!