olden days imaging

[Karen]

I am just curious to know how or if DSO imaging was possible before electronic digital cameras were invented. If so using photographic film must have been very tricky.

[mallorcasaint]

At the Norman Lockyer Observatory we have old photographic plate cameras that were used for imaging on our historic scopes (they are still operational).

[barkis]

Various methods were employed to make film very sensitive to faint light. Cold Cameras were used to good effect too.

Doctor David Malin, an Australian Astro Photographer produced some superb Deep Sky Images. I will add. he had access to some of the worlds large telescopes too. I'm sure a search on the web will give some samples of his work. Some amateurs too were quite adept at the techniques, and also captured notable images.

Ron

[Karen]

Thanks, I have had a look at some of those images. Outstanding achievements for photographic plates.

[Beulah]

Various methods were employed to make film very sensitive to faint light. Cold Cameras were used to good effect too.

Doctor David Malin, an Australian Astro Photographer produced some superb Deep Sky Images. I will add. he had access to some of the worlds large telescopes too. I'm sure a search on the web will give some samples of his work. Some amateurs too were quite adept at the techniques, and also captured notable images.

Ron

Wow, thanks for the heads up Ron! Incredible images there.

Here's the site : David Miller's atmospheric pictures

Galaxies and galaxy clusters

[Merlin66]

We used to take up to 25min exposures on Hypered B&W film, guided with a cross wire eyepiece and a MkI eyeball....those were the days!

[philj]

Indeed astro imaging has been around since the late 1800s, these ere new fangled ccds arent the only way of doing it:-)

I started imaging in the 80s, many a night spent manually guiding my Tasco 10TE with my old Zenit B loaded with TriX. Ahh the good ole days

Philj

[lukebl]

I have a pile of old copies of Sky and Telescope from the 1970s, which inspired me when I was a kid, and which I often still pick up and browse. It often published amateur imaging work and it amazes me at the effort people made using old film and SLRs, and producing images which today would be considered laughable. Yet at the time I was really impressed, and would have been very pleased to have achieved such results. Remember, of course, that autoguiding was unheard of, you had to rely on a single exposure (no such thing as stacking) and you wouldn't know if the results were any good until you had processed the image. Also, the equipment that the US amateurs had, as illustrated in the magazine, seemed way in advance (and cost) of what was available over here in the UK.

Here's a couple of extracts from one issue showing a few examples, presumably manually guiding.

[Beulah]

I imagine it was a precarious art, having to wait until images were processed so that you can see whether you had been successful or not...and digital imaging is hard enough!

[m.tweedy]

at least one of our members on this forum is still using this method

http://stargazerslounge.com/imaging-widefield-special-events-comets/165063-legacy-astrophotography-milky-way-mid-rift.html

[ollypenrice]

The link to Jim's image above will take you to a tribute to EE Barnard who went from child labourer as a photogroaher's assistant to observational astronomer to pioneer astro photographer.

In the early days the Petzval 4 element portrait lens proved to be the instrument of choice and modern Takahashi and Televue astrographs follow directly in line from this.

Many objects were discovered only on film, being both too big and too faint to be discernible at the EP.

Olly

[Karen]

EE Barnard. Lots of interesting reading about him on the web.

[Shibby]

I've got this book at home: Photographs of Stars, Star-Clusters and Nebulae - Cambridge Books Online - Cambridge University Press, which has just been republished by the Cambridge Library Collection project, but was originally published in 1893(!) and contains some fantastic & unprecedented photographs of clusters and nebulae.

Reading his conclusions, Isaac Roberts was so nearly touching on the true nature of galaxies (only known as "spiral nebulae"). The "Great Debate" didn't take place until 1920.

[rfdesigner]

I can assure you it was.

I was imaging using my 5.5" newt with film in the late 90s. I tried various emulsions but I generally found something like a fuji superior 800 was fairly good. I struggled to beat Mag16, which everyone whizzes past without thinking these days.

I had a dead camera body that I cemented a razor blade to the image plane for focussing (foucault test style). I piggy backed the scope on my Tal-1M and I hand/visually guided for one hour at a time. Once my old log book comes out of the loft for our imminent house move I'll post the pathetic best of pictures I had back then.

I suppose the images were what we might expect these days from a 200mm lense in about 10 or 15 minutes with little or no processing.

Derek