Where to Start in Astrophotography

     When I took my first astrophoto, I was observing the total solar eclipse of August 11, 1999 from Romania. At the time I was 12, and went to Romania with my Dad. I had with me a film snapshot camera, a Canon film SLR with a 100-200mm zoom lens, and a pair of "eclipse shades" which were being sold there at the time. On the day of the eclipse, my Dad and I took a taxi to somewhere very close to the Romanian-Bulgarian border, next the shore of the Black Sea, which was the closest place from our hotel where the totality of the eclipse would be visible. From the very first moment when the Sun's disc started to be covered by the Moon's till totality I was awestruck. The excitement slowly built as more and more of the Sun disappeared, and in the final moments before totality everything around us turned darker and darker, when in a flash the Sun's disc disappeared and its corona appeared, the sky remained a dark blue, and if I recall correctly a planet and a star or two could be easily seen. Truly an awesome sight!

    Viewing this relatively rare event in itself was a spectacular thing. But I was just as excited to take my very first pictures of something in the sky - my first real astrophoto -  something that I had wanted to do for years before. I handled the snap-shot camera as I had no experience with "professional" cameras, and my Dad took charge of the SLR. I took several pictures through the snap-shot, at first with the eclipse shades, then only a few during totality without the eclipse shades (as I wanted to spend as much time as possible looking and taking in the spectacular event which was happening above our heads). After getting back to Lebanon, I couldn't wait to see how the pictures of the eclipse would turn out. When I did get them back, I quickly went about sorting them through and putting the best ones in a small album. The best looking ones were, obviously, the ones taken by my Dad, through the SLR plus zoom lens. Still, I saved the snap-shot pictures, in which the totally eclipsed sun showed up as a tiny image in a sea of black-sky background.

     I still have the original photos and negatives from that first and spectacular astrophotography session of mine. One of those photos taken through the snapshot camera appears below:

And here's one that was taken through the SLR:

     I still use the SLR image, scanned from the original negative and touched-up in Photoshop on my website

     So, what's the moral of this story? Well, more than anything what I want to say is that with astrophotography, the starting point is always passion. If you were expecting from the title of this post for me to tell you what camera or telescope to buy, or what techniques to use for your first astrophotos, then you might be somewhat disappointed. Where you start is up to you and is actually dependent on your specific goals and types of astrophotography you'd like to get into. But, more important than anything, a good astrophotographer is a passionate one. With astrophotography, you might find yourself outside fiddling with delicate equipment for long hours in the cold just to capture a semi-mediocre image of something you can barely see anyway with your own eye and telescope. Even with the simplest beginner techniques, the results may look to you as unimpressive, especially when you compare them with those you may see online or in books taken by more experienced astrophotographers. What will keep you going, however, and drive you to learn how to improve is passion. Obviously, I was passionate about astronomy and astrophotography from a young age, but this is definitely not a necessity. What I think is necessary is that you love what you do no matter at what stage, so that whatever result you get with your images, you will be content and excited to have tried any new technique and succeeded - no matter how little that success. That is what will make you a true astrophotographer!

     I promise my next posts will be more practically oriented, but I do hope that for you potential astrophotographers out there, you'll keep what I said in mind.

Thanks for reading :)

and clear skies!