The telescopes, cameras, and software available to the amateur today allow the common man to take astrophotos with a quality exceeding that of the worlds biggest telescopes and best equipment of just 20 years ago. And even better, the cost and difficulty has gone way down, and the choice and quality have gone way up. All of these pictures were taken with an off the shelf Canon digital camera on commonly available scopes.
It is amazing when you look up at the sky, then take a picture through a
scope, and the stuff below shows up. You look back up in the area of the sky
you just photographed and just say "Wow". What's even more amazing is
that all the stars, galaxies, and nebulae that we see and photograph are
only a fraction of what is actually there. In much the same way that the
nighttime lights of towns from the window of a cross country jet
only hint at all the world below, so everything we see and photograph turns
out to be less than a half percent of what's actually all out there. To perceive
as much as we can,
astronomers use a multitude of instruments to look at the
spectrum from
radio waves to light rays, to gamma rays to gravity waves.
What's New? updated 7-20-10
A fairly nearby galaxy, on the other side of our own Milky Way
What's New? updated 6-20-10
One of the most famous Hubble images, and an amateur's version.
Only February can go without a full moon. That will occur when both January and March have a "blue", (second full) moon
Jupiter's Great Red Spot 1:00am to 2:45am (CST), 3-14-2005.
