A long dream come true. I have built my own astroshed and have now started to take pictures of the deep sky!
For several years I have dreamt of capturing not only what is under the surface, but also what lies far far away in the Universe. Always been interested in galaxies and other things outside our solar system.
So when I was called home to Sweden from Phnom Penh this spring due to Covid-19, I thought I would get the project started.
And now almost 4 months later – here I am – looking up and waiting for dark and clear skies!
Now, taking astro images is nothing like taking pictures under water! The technique is more to gather as much photons as possible during the night, we are talking about multiple frames (between 20 and 150) with loooong exposure (between 1 minute and 5-10 minutes). I use two different telescopes, one refractor at 714 mm focal length and one reflector at 400 mm. Attached to the scope is a cooled CMOS camera and I use digital solutions to program and do the guiding and photographing.
After one nights gathering of these precious photons, we also need calibration frames. We use darks to eliminate camera noise, flats to eliminate everything that is dust on the lenses and finally flat darks to calibrate the flats. A somewhat extensive post processing in finally needed before one can enjoy the nights capture. It takes around 3-8 hours to post process an astro image correctly.
This means that images are updated slowly (need clear skies, and time). But if you visit from time to time, you will find them at the page called ASTROPHOTOGRAPHY. I will use three different groups of images, Nebulae, Galaxies, Stars and clusters.
Enjoy!