About Me and My Astrophotography Equipment

Here is a quick overview of my astronomy equipment collected over the yeara, my tools and the software I use for post processing my photos.

Astronomy for me is an incredibly fascinating field of study, a challenging subject I love to photograph and one that I am passionate about. To get the best out of my hobby, I have invested in some quality astronomy equipment. Here is a quick overview of the essential astronomy equipment I use, why I chose it and how it helps me, as well as some history about me and how I got started.

My love for astronomy started in 2005 when I decided to photograph the lunar eclipse. Along with the eclipse I captured a few photos of the Pleiades star cluster. At the time I was using a Fuji FinePix S602 so the pictures weren't very good, but it did give me a sense of what was up there. I photographed the constellations, but it wasn't until Christmas when my parents bought me my first telescope that I really got into astronomy.

At that time my eyes were pretty bad, -6.75 prescriptions, so visual observations were limited, and the light pollution was pretty bad, so I decided to focus on astrophotography. In February 2006 I was involved in a serious car crash. I remember I was brought home from hospital on a stretcher and looking up at the stars and seeing a cluster of stars in the corner of my eyes. I looked at it, but couldn't see anything, yet looking to either side of it, there it was. I later learned about averted vision and that I was looking again at the Pleiades star cluster.

Once I had recovered enough to walk, I started taking my camera out and photographing the stars, and later the telescope. I wanted to see and photograph more clusters and deep-space objects.

My first, and main, telescope is a 200mm (8-inch) Newtonian reflector telescope, which is ideal for deep sky observing. This particular type of telescope has a large aperture, which allows me to pick up faint objects such as galaxies, nebulae and star clusters. This telescope came with the HEQ5 mount, a really heavy equatorial with Quartz driven motors. Polar alignment was a pain since I couldn't see Polaris, but using the drift method I could get an acceptable alignment for sub-10-second exposures. I later upgraded the internals to a Synscan GoTo, which allows me to use a 3-star alignment instead of polar alignment and I bought smaller, lighter telescopes. Whilst I've upgraded my cameras, the basic setup has remained the same.

• Telescopes
  • Skywatcher Explorer 200 Newtonian
  • Skywatcher Startravel 102 Refractor
  • Skywatcher Skymax 90 Muksatov
  • ZWO Seestar S50 Smart Telescipe
• Mounts
  • Skywatcher HEQ5 with Synscan GoTo Upgrade
  • Skywatcher EQ3
• Cameras
  • Canon EOS 80d
  • Bresser Full HD Deep Sky Camera and Guider

I also use a range of astronomical filters to enhance my view of the night sky. These include nebula filters, which help to bring out the colours and details in nebulae, and lunar filters, which help to reduce the glare of the moon. Most important is the light pollution filter which filters out most of the light pollution at the expense of exposure time. I also use a Barlow lens to increase the magnification of my telescope when observing planets.

I have a few cameras that I use to take photos of objects in the night sky. Most photos I take with my Canon 80d DSLR connected via a t-mount adaptor. For planetary and some deep space I use a Bresser Deep Sky camera.

I use software to help me plan my observing sessions. I mainly use Stellarium to help me identify objects in the night sky and plan sessions, and I also use Sky Map on Android for navigating the sky in the field.

For post-processing images, I use Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop, Siril, Deep Sky Stacker, Registax and Star Trails.