Astronomy

62 ASTRONOMY • MAY 2018

A variety of mounts and techniques

can help you create stunning

images. Which one is for you?

by Mike Reynolds

like cold cameras and film

hypersensitization.

As I progressed though more

detailed and complicated photo-

graphic techniques, acquiring a

mount that accurately tracked

the sky was the next step. This

took the trails out of my expo-

sures and gave me nice wide-

field images of the night sky.

Today’s digital techniques are

similar to the ones I used in the

film days; the advantage is that

you can control with your cam-

era many of the settings I had to

deal with by using different film

types or in the darkroom. As

with film, prints, and the dark-

room, digital processing is

another story in itself.

General interest in wide-field

camera-lens imaging has

GUIDE

YOUR

CAMERA

TO

GREAT

SHOTS

LIKE MANY OF TODAY’S ASTRONOMICAL

imagers, I started astrophotography by taking simple

star and planet trail shots, and photographing the

Moon through my telescope. This was during the

film era, when most amateur astronomers considered

color emulsions advanced, not to mention special

spectroscopic and astronomical films and techniques,

The photographer

captured Barnard’s

Loop in Orion over

two nights from

a plateau about

25 miles east of Globe,

Arizona. He used an

AstroTrac tracking

mount on a heavy

tripod as his base.

He mounted his QSI

583wsg camera on an

autofocus mounting

bracket and attached

it to a Pentax 67

medium-format lens.

NICHOLAS CLARKE