35mm Astrophotography

When I bought my C5+ I wanted a scope that would let me start taking pictures and experimenting with astrophotography. I quickly bought "Astrophotography for the Amatuer" by Micheal Covington, read up on the subject and bought my first pieces of dedicated astrophotography gear - a T-Adapter, T-Ring and Tele-Extender. I wanted to get the basics down doing some short-exposure work then move to piggy-backing, then to guided photography. Since then I've gotten interested in CCD work and may move to that sooner since I have some light pollution to contend with and love computer gadgets.

This page is getting big - here's a sub-menu.

My Astrophotography Setup

For all the pictures here I'm using my Celestron C5+ telescope in one of several modes - prime focus, as a piggyback mount, or using eyepiece projection. I'm using an Olympus OM-1 now for photos, some of the early ones here were with a Pentax SF-10 that just couldn't do long exposures. I've got an f/1.8 50mm and an f/3.5 135mm lens for the OM-1 as well as a clear focusing screen installed. Early shots were on Kodak TMax 400 B&W film though now I mostly use Kodak Gold 400 (not Royal Gold 400 - made that mistake once) or Fuji Super G 800.

Astrophotography Tools

I wrote a Win32 application (soon to be ported to PalmPC platforms) to calculate exposures.  This is available as donation-ware on the site.  Check out AstPhoto.exe and see if you like it. 

Also, here's a link to a Microsoft Word 6.0/95 document that is my Astrophotography Log sheet. If you are using IE 3.X then you may end up with this embedded in your window, to actually download it right-click on the hot-link and use the "Save Target As..." item in the pop-up menu.

To scan I'm now using an HP PhotoSmart S20 scanner that handles slides, photos, or negatives.  To process images I use CCDSoft from Software Bisque.