What is Astrophotography?
Astrophotography is a special type of photography involving taking images of the night sky or astronomical objects (things such as stars, planets and moons.) There are many different names for astronomical objects such as Celestial Objects, Celestial Bodies and Astronomical Bodies. They are literally naturally occurring 'things' within the empty space of the universe as we know it.
Photography completely revolutionised astronomy, making it possible for astronomers to record clear and accurate images of distant planets and galaxy's and even stars and nebula that are invisible to the human eye. Photography has and will always play a crucial role in the research and development of space and space travel. |
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Equipment Used When Doing Astrophotography
In order to take photos of space, it's going to take a fair amount of high quality gear. You can pull of some really good photos of the night sky with basic gear such as a DSLR and a tripod, but if you want to get into the depths of stars and celestial bodies then you're going to need a little more. Equipment used among astrophotographers varies quite a lot. They face challenges that differ from regular photography on earth. For example, if the photographer is based in a urban area they may need to have equipment that they can transport to somewhere with less light pollution. Light Pollution is when man made light sources such as street lamps and the light from houses in cities effects your ability to see space. People can use special filters or complex computer techniques to remove light that would otherwise ruin the photo. Also, it can be surprisingly difficult to line up a telescope with the distant object that you're trying to photograph, but again this problem can be made a lot simpler by using computer technology and tracking devices.
As mentioned earlier, one of the most basic forms of equipment used can consist of a DSLR camera and a tripod. A tripod is necessary in almost every situation when shooting space from earth as you're dealing with extremely long exposures (sometimes going up to and hour and a half!), and they can be completely ruined by a slight movement. Camera focal length is normally short as longer lenses will show image trailing a lot easier. However, when a photographer purposefully allows image trailing in astrophotography it is called 'Star Trails' and can look absolutely incredible.
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Pieces of equipment called "Tracking Mounts" are used to help achieve longer exposures without getting a blurry image. This is done by having a motorised axis where the camera is rotated in a certain way to compensate for Earths rotation.
Equipment ranges from all the above mentioned to extremely expensive and large telescopes within observatory houses, used to photograph distant objects with high quality resolution and very high magnification.
Astrophotography Aboard The ISS
Not only can Astrophotography be done on earth, but also deep into space. A common place this is done is aboard the ISS or International Space Station. This station orbits 250 kilometres from the earth, and travels at just about 8km/s (17,150 Miles per hour). This means that the station orbits around earth once every 92 minutes. Quite surprisingly, the cameras aboard the ISS are just regular DSLR cameras, mostly made by Nikon. However, the lenses they use can be quite amazing.
Although most of the cameras they use are DSLR's, they do have few aboard that are completely opposite; one of which is used for monitoring the Earth for disaster relief support and climate changes. |
Chris Hadfield
Chris Hadfield is a retired astronaut from Canada. He was one engineer and used to be in the Royal Canadian Air Force as a fighter pilot. Hadfield was one of the four new Canadian astronauts selected out of the 5,330 applicants. He has flown 2 shuttle missions,been to space 3 times, been a commander aboard the ISS, lived on the seabed for 14 days and many more. He is also a photographer. Whilst being aboard the ISS, he has taken thousands of photos of Earth. The view of Earth from the International Space Station is incredible. It allows the astronauts to see continents and countries in completely different ways, see the shadows of clouds on the surface or bodies of water lit up by the sunlight. One of Hadfield's favourite places to photograph is the Sahara Desert, Africa. It is full of huge acres of rock and sand and no vegetation to cover any of it up
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