First Deep Sky Object Astrophotography

Doing astrophotography work is not an easy feat. There's the problem of setting up a decent telescope, getting a good camera and waiting for long hours to get magnificent shots of galaxies, star clusters, nebulae, planets and other heavenly bodies. However, doing astrophotography with a mediocre telescope and a digital point and shoot camera seems impossible especially if you are shooting Deep Sky Objects or DSOs (my definition of this is heavenly bodies found outside our solar system which is very, very far away).

However, I do not want to be limited with my equipment and I want to liberate whatever tools I have to achieve little things that will surely help me understand more sophisticated equipment. Tonight, I tried getting shots of the Orion Nebula using my trusty 4.5 inch equatorially mounted reflector, a 22mm Ramsden Eyepiece and a friend's Canon IXUS 130 digital point and shoot camera. Taking this photo only took me around 15 minutes including telescope setup. Here is the result of my effort of trying to capture the Orion Nebula (click the photo for a larger view): 

My astrophoto of the Orion Nebula

For reference, here is a more professional photo of the Orion Nebula taken using an 8 inch reflector and a Nikon D70 DSLR camera :

The Orion Nebula using mid-range to professional tools

such as big aperture telescopes and DSLR cameras.

(Photo credit : Ioannidis Panos; Pioannid at en.wikipedia)

Here are other photos that I took during the night (Please click photos to enlarge):

The constellation Orion 

A part of the Pleiades star cluster

My photo may be quite far from the reference photo but I'm on my way there. The use of simple tools will aid us all in exploring better systems and sophisticated equipment. As they say, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. And I have started my journey taking small steps such as doing simple astrophotography with available tools. You can do it too!