About
The images on this page contain selected work I have done since 2005 using my own equipment or telescopes at the McDonald Observatory, Kitt Peak Observatory (NOAO) and remote robotic telescopes in Chile and the Canary Islands. Astrophotography is a specialized type of photography that involves recording images of planetary and deep space and large areas of the night sky. Most astrophotographers start out with relatively simpler projects such as photographing bright planets, phases of the moon, and the sun. Solar astronomy requires specialized filters to eliminate 99.9% of the sunlight so as to avoid burning out the detector. Of course you should never look at the sun directly with your eyes or though a telescope or binoculars. Solar System targets are much brighter than other deep space objects such as nebulae and galaxies and therefore are easier to capture due to their shorter required exposure times. Besides being able to record the details of relatively bright objects, such as the moon and planets, astrophotography has the unique ability to image objects invisible to the human eye such as dim nebulae, and galaxies. This is done by long time exposure since digital cameras can accumulate and sum light photons over these long periods of time. Most of the images on this page were captured using Charged-Coupled Detectors (CCDs) that are highly specialized digital cameras. However, unlike typical consumer “point and shoot” digital cameras, CCDs take separate images (frames) in separate filters, such a red, green, blue and H-alpha. The separate frames must then be calibrated to remove electronic noise typical of very long exposures. The calibrated frames are then stacked together, combined, and flatten to create the final photo. As you can imagine, this process takes many steps, much time, and a lot of patience. I do not recommend this hobby for the faint of heart! However, as you can see below, this tedious work is rewarded with interesting and beautiful views of our solar system! For more information about any specific image, visit my Flickr photostream. Here you can read background information about each celestial object and how it was captured.
Nebulae
The word “nebula” is derived from the Latin word for “clouds”. Indeed, a nebula is a cosmic cloud of gas and dust floating in space. More than one nebula are called nebulae. Nebulae are the basic building blocks of the universe. They contain the elements from which stars and solar systems are built. Indeed, our own solar system originated from a collapsing nebula left from the remnants of a massive star that exploded billions of years ago in a spectacular supernova. Nebula are also among the most beautiful objects in our galaxy, glowing with rich colors and swirls of light. They are among my favorite targets for astrophotography. Stars inside these clouds reflect light in surrounding gas with brilliant reds, greens, and blues. These colors are the result of different elements within the nebula. Most nebulae are composed of about 90% hydrogen, 10% helium, and 0.1% heavy elements such as carbon, nitrogen, magnesium, potassium, calcium, iron. The predominance of hydrogen gives many of these nebulae a deep red color. Nebulae also tend to be some of the largest objects in our galaxy with some clouds extending over hundreds of light-years across. A light year is the distant light travels in one year, or about 6 trillion miles
Galaxies and Star Clusters
Galaxies and star clusters are massive groups of thousands to billions of stars that are bound together by gravity to form extended systems of stars. The galaxies you see below are up to hundreds of million of light years away from the Earth. The light we see from them tonight left before humans first walked on this planet. In this manner, a telescope is literally a time machine, allowing us to peer into the distant past. The star clusters on this page are globular clusters with hundreds of thousand of stars or loosely associated open cluster containing only a few hundred stars. Unlike galaxies, the star clusters on this page are relatively close to Earth – “only” up to 100,000 light years away. A light year is the distant light travels in one year, or about 6 trillion miles (10^15 meters).
Photo Gallery
© 2012-current, M.W. Kelly and Astrostrider Photography.
All photographs appearing on this site are the property of Mark W. Kelly and Astrostrider Photography. They are protected by U.S. Copyright Laws, and are not to be downloaded or reproduced in any way without the written permission of Astrostrider Photography. Copyright 2012 Mark W. Kelly. All Rights Reserved.
