20 years of development in astro imaging - I found some of my old photos and: LOL!

[Daniel Karl]

Hey

After a 15 year hiatus I recently found my interest in astro photography again, when I saw that some people are now taking photos with a 3" refractor from their backyard in London, that almost look like stuff from my favourite Anglo Australian Telescope Book 20 years ago.

I got the bug for astro-photography in the late 1990's - owed to a good part to that mentioned AAT Book "A View of the Universe"by David Malin.
When my classmates asked my to buy prints of my very first astro-photo of comet Hale-Bopp and the local newspaper wanted to interview me about it, it seemed to be the path to fame and fortune 🤣.

Over the course of the years it all got out of hand a bit and ended with a monster 15" f/4.6 LOMO Newton on a 200lbs ALT-7 GEM and a ton (literally) of concrete in my parents garden. Photography on actual film with frozen hyper sensitised stock and manual off axis guiding for hour long single exposures.

And the result: 

🤣😂😆🤪 (My image processing 'techniques' didn't really help either - haha)

By the time, digital consumer cameras became relevant, I had finished school and university and it was time to get to work for a living instead of saving for nerdy hobbies.
So I took a last shot at Orion with the Canon 20D and trucked all my equipment (safe the ton of concrete, which is still in my parents garden) to a new owner.

You can tell, that my image processing had not improved much over those years - haha.
 

Now I see pictures taken with a stock lens from a backyard in London that make me want to fade into the wallpaper when I think back at what I 'achieved' with almost £20k worth of equipment in a reasonably dark location.
Of course my efforts were limited by my own abilities and I never got anywhere near the possible potential of that wonderful setup.
I do wonder, what capable hands could do nowadays with that equipment!
(and I am truly tempted to get my hands back on a little setup and try again myself - it seems like that pandemic might have brought back an entirely different bug for me)

Have a lovely weekend

Edited March 27, 2021 by Daniel Karl

[Nik271]

Thank you for sharing this! Actually your images look quite decent to me. The progress in the past 20 years  has been in better sensors, tracking and most importantly stacking software. If it was single exposures only then  I doubt Orion will look any better than your image.

It's never too late to get into the hobby again and as you point out  the gear can be much more portable now 😀

[tomato]

Wow, I thought I was serious about AP back in the late 80’s, early 90’s but got nothing approaching your M42. I could only image for about 15 minutes before LP intruded on the film, but processing  was a lot more straightforward back then, you just needed the kitchen sink!

Getting back into AP after a 30 year break has been a revelation, I still marvel at what can be achieved with the latest digital cameras.

But believe me, it can still be a very deep money pit, I must have spent your pre digital  budget and then some.

[Daniel Karl]

Hey Nik and Tomato,

thanks for your encouragement!
I do vaguely remember the hours I spent experimenting in Photoshop and a very slow film scanner that cost more than a high end camera today - and was given away a few years later because SCSI interfaces were not part of any new PC any more.

It's kind of exciting because it feels like there is so much new technology to discover - almost like when I first started.
I wish I still had some of my raw data, but I fear those drives up in the attic back home in Germany won't even start up any more. I'm trying to get my sister to go up there and drag them out. 

Here's another one, which must have been taken with the 20D.

 

 

Perhaps we should open a thread to compare vintage amateur photos and reminisce about the 'good old times' - hahaha.

Edited March 27, 2021 by Daniel Karl
bad english - lol

[callisto]

2 hours ago, Nik271 said:

your images look quite decent to me

 

1 hour ago, tomato said:

got nothing approaching your M42

Exactly what I was going to say 😀

 

Mark

[tomato]

5 hours ago, Daniel Karl said:

Hey Nik and Tomato,

thanks for your encouragement!
I do vaguely remember the hours I spent experimenting in Photoshop and a very slow film scanner that cost more than a high end camera today - and was given away a few years later because SCSI interfaces were not part of any new PC any more.

It's kind of exciting because it feels like there is so much new technology to discover - almost like when I first started.
I wish I still had some of my raw data, but I fear those drives up in the attic back home in Germany won't even start up any more. I'm trying to get my sister to go up there and drag them out. 

Here's another one, which must have been taken with the 20D.

 

 

Perhaps we should open a thread to compare vintage amateur photos and reminisce about the 'good old times' - hahaha.

That's a M81 image that certainly stands the test of time. I gave a StarGazine talk on this forum back in January, entitled 'Astrophotography Then and Now', there are lots of my crude pre-digital attempts on there if you want a laugh.😄

[mackiedlm]

Really enjoyed reading that! Technology has moved so fast in only 20 years that ot can be hard to believe. Thanks sharing.

[Daniel Karl]

@tomato I'd like to see that talk - I'm sure it would spark some memories.
 

I think I have too much time on my hands - haha. Trying to find a mount at the moment to work on my future sleep deficit.
Found a few more pictures in my old website folder - they're all just pretty small resolution but judging from the stars making them bigger would probably not reveal any more details - haha.

 

From the lack of Ha I'd say those were from the first experiments with the 10D. I remember the M27 was published quite a few times because it had HD 189733 A in the frame (not because it was a particularly good photo) - The star gained a bit of spotlight because one of its planets apparently was the first to have its surface temperature accurately determined or something along those lines.
Nobody bothered to ask me or even tell me about using the photo, but they did credit me - so suddenly when I searched my name all these sites came up and I had no clue, what was going on (a state of mind that has become a bit of a habit since) 🤣.

 

[Froeng]

Hi Daniel,

those shots are all excellent, and still very good by today’s standards. The good old times of manual guiding... I remember doing some 20min long exposures back in the 1990s. You always had to ensure not to touch the metal eyepiece with your eyelid in winter, haha!

I never bothered with the whole autoguiding thing as I like to keep things simple... I am mostly a visual observer though (just outside London).

Frank

Edited March 28, 2021 by Froeng

[Daniel Karl]

Frank,

I have to admit that I did get an ST-4 autoguider at some point (painfully imported from the US) towards the end - before I had to give up the hobby (temporary). I think I was a bit underwhelmed by my pictures at the time. The 15" LOMO had such excellent optics and the ALT-7 did an incredible job with that monster, but it just seemed that in order to get the best out of it you'd have had to switch to an ST-8 or better, maybe even get an AO unit. I didn't have any money left - haha.

Nobody had (to my knowledge) considered taking the IR filters off the 10D at that point and the H alpha sensitivity was just underwhelming. You can tell in M101 how there is so little red showing in those regions. I hope I can recover some of my old files and process them again, but it seems like so much is possible today with much smaller units. Without reciprocity failure and the sensitivity of current cameras aperture doesn't seem to be such a dominant factor any more.

Perhaps we can meet up for a star party some day, if the pest ever ends and I manage to get a telescope again - haha.