Books

[ZiHao]

Hello all,

Any good books or websites out there about theories of astrophotography? Things such as SNR, types of noise... would be great. 

[Cornelius Varley]

Making Every Photon Count is the usual recommendation. Take a look a the banner at the top of the page.

 

[Davey-T]

Old  but in depth maths with lots of equations if you like theory, no CMOS in my version.

There is a "later" 2000 version, lots of used editions on Amazon

Dave

[skybadger]

Ian McLean electronic imaging is the Bible in the context of the late 1990 and the state of the art in building and reducing ccd cameras. 

[wimvb]

The first chapter of "Lessons from the Masters" written by Stan Moore, gives a good overview. The book itself is edited by Robert Gendler. 

[andrew s]

Thierry Lagault the French astro-photographer has an excellent web site.

Regards Andrew 

[steppenwolf]

You might like to have a look at 'Scientific Astrophotography' by Gerald H Hubbell. For what it is worth, this is my personal synopsis of the book:-

Hubbell’s background as a Nuclear Instrumentation and Controls Engineer shows through in the writing style of this book as it is unlike any other book you will have read on the subject of Astrophotography.

Hubbell introduces the reader to a whole host of new acronyms, some of his own making and these make for rather tiresome reading after a while. These and the general writing style read more like an in-depth functional specification document on the subject of astrophotography than typical books on the subject. Unfortunately, this gives the book a rather cold feel but it is well worth persevering as useful and, more importantly, accurate information is hidden within the text of the ‘observation program’ that he is training you to develop.

Subjects covered include equipment choice, integration of the equipment, image acquisition and calibration, scientific image data analysis, how to submit your data to scientific organisations and the use of professional level observatories for image capture.

As the title suggests, the book is not intended to guide you through the process of capturing and processing ‘pretty picture’ astrophotographs but rather how to take images suitable for astrometric, photometric and spectroscopic analysis. The text is fairly heavy on mathematics but the calculations serve to underline the scientific endeavour that the book seeks to teach.

The ‘functional specification’ writing style is both the book’s strength and its weakness – while many readers will see it as underpinning the scientific credentials of the work, others may simply find it just too hard-going.

 

[ZiHao]

8 hours ago, steppenwolf said:

You might like to have a look at 'Scientific Astrophotography' by Gerald H Hubbell. For what it is worth, this is my personal synopsis of the book:-

Hubbell’s background as a Nuclear Instrumentation and Controls Engineer shows through in the writing style of this book as it is unlike any other book you will have read on the subject of Astrophotography.

Hubbell introduces the reader to a whole host of new acronyms, some of his own making and these make for rather tiresome reading after a while. These and the general writing style read more like an in-depth functional specification document on the subject of astrophotography than typical books on the subject. Unfortunately, this gives the book a rather cold feel but it is well worth persevering as useful and, more importantly, accurate information is hidden within the text of the ‘observation program’ that he is training you to develop.

Subjects covered include equipment choice, integration of the equipment, image acquisition and calibration, scientific image data analysis, how to submit your data to scientific organisations and the use of professional level observatories for image capture.

As the title suggests, the book is not intended to guide you through the process of capturing and processing ‘pretty picture’ astrophotographs but rather how to take images suitable for astrometric, photometric and spectroscopic analysis. The text is fairly heavy on mathematics but the calculations serve to underline the scientific endeavour that the book seeks to teach.

The ‘functional specification’ writing style is both the book’s strength and its weakness – while many readers will see it as underpinning the scientific credentials of the work, others may simply find it just too hard-going.

 

Thanks for writing the summary, Steve. I will have a look at the book. Looking forward to your zoom meeting later at 3am as well 😁