New Idea: 1 picture from 1 shoot!
Dear Beginner and Advanced Astronomer Colleagues,
The new movie called „Csillagnézők” (in English: Star Watchers) has been presented in very first time in the ceremonial hall of the Hungarian Scientific Academy in Budapest on 19/02/2018.
In this movie, beyond the presentation of the history of the Hungarian amateur astronomer organization, amateur astronomer colleagues have presented the telescopes and other equipment of their own which have been constructed and build (or purchased) by them and their astro-photographs.
The most important message of this film was to call Hungarian youngsters’ attention to look up to the sky including its wonderful objects, instead of browsing on video screens all day: “The starry night is for everyone”.
Astrophotography has been developed incredibly during last decades; today, it is possible to take almost as nice and colorful pictures from the surface of the Earth as Hubble satellite telescope can do it from the space. But for making such a nice astro-photographs you need special and pricey instruments, special filters, well based knowledge and experiences. You must take 10 … 50 pictures from the same object using exposures as long as 2-5-10 minute one by one, exact calibration process and, afterwards, a lot of post-processing activity. Additionally, in most cases, the result will be garish, over-saturated and over-sharpened.
A young and/or beginner astro-photographer would have to start his/her activity on much easier way and later, having a lot of experiences acquired in this field day by day, he/she will be able to create wonderful and better pictures about exotic and very dim objects of the night sky than today’s maters… So, if this beginner can make a really good photograph as just a single shot, he/she will take a giant leap forward. A nice single exposure taken by me can give gladness to me today as well…
This is why, I thought we would need to start at the beginning. If you look at the starry sky above, you can see spectacular forms of stars and other objects and a keen-eyed observer can also realize their colors. If you want to photograph them, just a simple and cheap still-camera or mobile phone camera on top of a tripod can be enough, which will be good together with a small astronomy telescope later, and you will be able to look at your pictures on a PC-screen. It is really great fun to see your own astronomy photographs!!!
When buying a new telescope one can get a lot of information just from one photo, about what kind of possibilities can have with a telescope! for example: diagonal, collimation error, mirror or optical distortion, contamination, chromatic aberration, spherical aberration, pixel defects.
New tip: 1 picture – 1 exposure!
Look at the sky using your astro-photo equipment, click one (take one exposure) and please, send us this picture without any modification.
I wish you clear, starry sky to do this and successful pictures with natural color.
