Mira Thomas

Emily Moder
Astrophotography: Photography Hit List
Scorpius - One of the constellations of the zodiac. Its name is latin for scorpion. It lies between Libra to the
west and Sagittarius to the east. It has 18 main stars.
Libra - This is a constellation of the zodiac and its name is latin for weighing scales. It lies between Virgo to the
west and Scorpius to the east. Its fairly faint with no first magnitude stars.
Planetary Astrophotography
Planetary imaging used to be one of the hardest forms of astrophotography. An efficient way of taking photos is
using webcams because it allows hundreds of thousands of pictures to be taken within seconds at a very high
frame rate, usually around 10-20 frames per second. These photos can be captured with more resolution than
anything ever taken with even the best CCD cameras.
Deep Field Astrophotography
These are photos taken with a telescope of objects beyond our solar system. This is the most technical and
hardest form of astrophotography, but the photos are some of the most stunning of distant galaxies.
Wide Field Astrophotography
This is astrophotography taken with a DSLR camera and lens with a wide field of view/wide angled lens. This
is the most accessible form of astrophotography.
Learn about the night sky:
1. What is nebula
A Nebula is named after the latin word for cloud, nebulae are not only massive clouds of dust,
hydrogen and helium gas, and plasma. A nebula is formed when portions of the interstellar medium
undergo gravitational collapse. Mutual gravitational attraction causes matter to clump together, forming
regions of greater and greater density. From this, stars may form in the center of the collapsing material,
whose ultraviolet ionizing radiation causes the surrounding gas to become visible at optical wavelengths.
2. What is a galaxy
A system of millions or billions of stars, with gas and dust, held together by gravitational force. One
galaxy can have billions of stars and be as large as 200,000 light years across. Stars are collected into
galaxies and galaxies are collected into groups of galaxies; clusters.
3. How do we know how far away they are?
The universe has been expanding overtime. We use to think the galaxy was 13.24 billion light years
away, but its actually more like 30.35 billion light years away. We are able to find the distance the same
way we know how far a car is by its headlights. We know how much light a cars headlights emits. To
measure the distance to a galaxy, we try to find stars in that galaxy whose absolute light output we can
measure. By observing the brightness of stars, we can measure the distance to galaxies 300 million light
years away.
4. What objects are in the Milky way?
The Milky way galaxy is significant to humans because it is our home. The Milky Way is a barred spiral
galaxy, about 100,000 light-years across. If you could look down on it from the top, you would see a

central bulge surrounded by four large spiral arms that wrap around it. Spiral galaxies make up about
two-third of the galaxies in the universe. The Milky Way also contains two significant minor arms, as
well as two smaller spurs. One of the spurs, known as the Orion Arm, contains the sun and the solar
system. The Orion arm is located between two major arms, Perseus and Sagittarius. The Milky way does
not sit still, but constantly rotates.
5. What objects are outside of it?
Only three galaxies outside the Milky Way are easily visible to the unaided eye, the great galaxy in
Andromeda (the Andromeda Nebula) and the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. These are some of
our nearest galactic neighbors. The farthest galaxies ever observed are more than 10 billion light-years
away.
6. What is a star cluster?
When stars are born they develop from large clouds of molecular gas. This means that they form in
groups or clusters, since molecular clouds are composed of hundreds of solar masses of material. After
the remnant gas is heated and blow away, the stars collect together by gravity. During the exchange of
energy between the stars, some stars reach escape velocity from the protocluster and become runaway
stars. The rest become gravitationally bound, meaning they will exist as collection orbiting each other
forever.
Research how the Deep Sky Stacker software works
This is a free software for astrophotographers that simplifies all the pre-processing steps of deep sky pictures.
After taking lots of photos, you can upload them on this software and overnight the images will process. This
software can work with a variety of file formats and read them. Once the photos are completed uploaded to the
software, there are post-processing options to edit the photos.