Here is a selection of some of my astrophotographyimages. The equipment used to produce the images varies greatly depending on the subject matter - i'll try and put a brief description alongside each section. Later on, I may add more detailed information on the techniques used but for now enjoy the pictures!

Quick Links: aurora - stars - planets - moon

Aurora - the northern lights
In October 2003, the sun produced a flare of energy that later hit the Earth's protective magnetic field. The unusually large flare meant that the northern lights - the aurora - were visible much further south than normal. The images below were taken on Fuji Superia 200 film, and the exposures varied from 20-50 seconds or so.

New: Time Lapse Video from the Aurora in Nov '2004
Click here to download (1Mb, DivX Video Codec required to view)

Stars
A lot of astro-photography is quite tricky, with much to learn including techniques and equipment. There are some easy ways to get started though, and with relatively modest equipment. The first few images below show "star trails". As the earth rotates, the pattern of stars rotates overhead. If your camera has a "bulb" setting, you can capture this movement by exposing the film for a long period of time - anything from a few minutes to a few hours. The only real problems are combatting light pollution (dark skies are a must!) and also keeping an eye out for the lens misting up on cold nights.

The next level from imaging star trails is to add a motorised mount. This enables the camera to rotate at the correct speed and angle so that it effectively cancels out the Earths rotation. The end result being that the stars don't move. There are dedicated mounts available for doing this, however for simplicity I simply bolted the camera to my telescope mount. I am looking to make a dedicated camera mount at some point as the telescope one is large and heavy and overkill for a simple widefield imaging session! From left to right the images below are:
Summer Milky Way - a shot taken into the plane of our home galaxy you can see the shadows of dust trails. Although the sky looks bright it was actually late at night and dark when this was taken
M45 (The Pleiades) from afar - low in the sky, light pollution was a problem here.
M45 (The Pleidaes) close up - this was taken through the telescope by attaching the camera body to the 'scope directly and using the telescope itself as the lens. This sort of photography is an order of magnitude harder - alignment must be spot on, and the exposure needs more work. This image is over exposed, and you can also see the stars have trailed slightly. This could be due to inherent error in the 'scope drive, wind, or bad polar alignment. The learning curve gets steeper...!

	First attempt at Saturn: Small and a bit rubbish really, but was still exciting to see it on the screen!
	Next attempt (March 2004) Much better. The addition of the barlow lens enlarges the image. More time spent processing and less brightness in the base .avi file yields a big improvement. At the time of writing (Nov '04), Saturn is returning to the evening skies so I will be able to try again soon.
	First attempt at Jupiter Not a bad first go, but more work needed - I think more frames were required in the stack on this one.
	Venus transit 2004 I haven't imaged Venus at night yet, but in 2004 the planet transited (passed in front of) the Sun. This event is pretty rare (the last was in 1882!). This image is a couple of the ones I took on the day by simply holding a digital camera up to the eyepiece on the telescope.
	Mars - October 27th 2005. This is my first attempt at imaging Mars, and came out OK considering some problems! Firstly, the seeing wasn't great and there was a light haze, so it never really snapped into focus. In addition, the layout of the current house I am living in meant I was imaging Mars directly above the roof so that adds more image degradation! In any case, after processing in Registax, the images have come out reasonably, and you can see the dark "Mare" across the equator of the planet easily.
	Saturn - February 18th 2006. A nice clear night with good seeing. The view through the eyepiece was immediately much better than the last time I took a look at Saturn - my latest attempts at collimation may have helped. The two images on the left were created in Registax from avi's containing around 1000 frames.
	Mars - December 16th 2007. Through the eyepiece this didn't look good at all - the moon was still present and there was a light mist. The eyepiece had also misted up something rotten due to it being very cold! However the image processed from the .avi you see here is a lot better than the first attempts above from a couple of years ago!
	Another go at Saturn - April 1st 2008. The planet has tilted so the rings are almost edge on to the earth now, meaning that ring features are much harder to spot. This image isn't really any better than my 2006 attempt, although I was taking the source .avi through some trees! Hopefully in a week or two the planet will have moved into the clear and I can get a better source video.

The Moon
The moon is an easier object to image simply because its size and brightness means most photos can be done on a "single shot" basis - no long exposures or tracking needed!

	First moon image - taken by holding my digital camera up to the eyepiece of the telescope. Actually quite hard to do as the field of view is so small!
	Another early moon image - this time I had used the barlow and 7.5mm eyepiece to get close in. The circle occurs as the image field of view is tiny with this eyepiece. dark and blurry but close up!
	For this image, I attached my SLR Camera to the telescope without any eyepieces. This makes the telescope the camera lens and gives a much clearer image. When the moon is next up, I'm going to try using my camera's 2x adapter to get more detail. 1/125s, Fuji Superia 200. The telescope is f/8 (6"/1200mm focal length)
	Moon - December 15th 2007. This is the first attempt at putting my DSLR body straight onto the camera (similar to the image above but with more immediate results!) Came out quite nicely but in hindsight I'm wondering if I can still improve on the focus. It was cloudy too, so that won't have helped...

Comets
Comets are unpredictable things. Often, one that is predicted to become bright fails to, and sometimes, the opposite happens; a comet that is predicted to stay small and dim in the sky will suddenly put on a fantastic show. These "dirty snowballs" have interesed people for years.

	Comet 17/P Holmes brightened considerably in late October 2007 as a large cloud of gas escaped from it, presumably due to a crack in the icy core splitting open. Unfortunately, it's been cloudy most of the time here, however I did have chance to grab this picture with my DSLR during a brief break in the cloud cover.
	This view was taken by mounting my Sony A100 DSLR directly onto my telescope in place of the eyepiece. You can see a bright point close to the centre of the gas cloud, that I'm assuming is the comet's main core.
	This is a close-up crop from the previous image.