Tonight's Calgary Photographic Society meeting had a speaker from the Calgary Centre of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. The topic was "Basic Astrophotography" - pretty interesting.
Basic Equiptment:
- a camera that:
- has removable/interchangeable lenses (most any SLR will meet this requirement)
- allows the shutter to be operated in all modes (time exposure mode especially) even with the battery removed!
- has the ability to do long time exposures (usually the "B" setting)
- has the ability to accept a remote shutter release cable
- has a tripod mount threaded hole on the bottom
- A tripod -should be able to hold the camera steady
- A remote release - e.g. Canon TC-80N3 Programmable Remote ReleaseThe TC-80N3 comes with an 80cm / 2.6 foot cord. It is a self timer, interval timer and long-exposure timer. The timer can be set from anywhere between 1 second and 99 hours, 59 minutes 59 seconds. You can take up to 99 frames, with any time interval between frames, all completely unattended. It also has a light for the LCD control panel so you can see it in the dark.
Different ways to take astrophotos:
- Afocal - through the eyepiece with adapter
- Piggyback – camera, with telephoto lens, piggyback on a motorized telescope
- Prime focus- camera looking through telescope - focus is very tough - tip: use live view or PC to see the image live
- Eyepiece projection - easily blur but gets most zoom - it may be the only way to shoot Saturn or Jupiter
Some sites the speaker mentioned:
http://www.calgary.rasc.ca
http://www.astronomycalgary.com/ -list of events
http://www.heavens-above.com
