Making Every Photon Count by Steve Richards (Steppenwolf).

[Ant]

One of the main aims of SGL is to help astronomers. We do not mind where they are in the learing curve, every question asked is important to the poster and every question gets a multitude of answers.

It is a great honour to have been asked by Steve (Steppenwolf) to help publicise his new book. Steve has been a valuable member of SGL for 2 years now and has always had plenty of time for helping people out and answering questions and queries. It is a great pleasure to support Steve.

Steve has agreed to donate a signed copy of his book as a competition prize, the competition will be aimed at beginners. More details of the competition will follow, it is likely to run during the summer months.

Making Every Photon Count by Steve Richards (Steppenwolf).

When I started astro-photography at the end of 2004, I looked for a book that would get me up and running with my relatively low budget equipment but none of the available books quite hit the spot for an absolute beginner who doesn’t know a ‘T’ ring from a tea pot! Many otherwise excellent books on the subject of astro-photography are essentially showcases for the author’s work using the latest state of the art equipment acquired over many years, using methods honed through long experience of imaging. Although without doubt these books give the reader something to aspire to and the images are, of course, a very important and worthwhile part of any book, the 'high end' nature of the equipment in use is often far removed from the realistic purchases of the beginner.

This book seeks to redress this situation by discussing the use of equipment more in keeping with the beginner’s budget. The book goes to some lengths to discuss the minimum requirements as well as the more desirable equipment that would be on many a beginner’s ‘wish list’ with an emphasis on the importance of the mount over everything else.

The importance of other beginner’s experiences have been a mainstay of the topics discussed in the book as the same old questions come up again and again on forums like SGL which is where I first sought information and guidance on the subject. I have learnt much from and subsequently contributed to the numerous astro-photography based topics on these forums and the answers to these same old questions are pretty much always the same - and those answers are to be found in my book. I still seek advice on more advanced issues on forums like SGL as I certainly don’t have all the answers to this complex subject but my book is aimed specifically at beginners who will be where I was 4 years ago.

More information (including the front cover) here.

Details of the book and an opportunity to purchase it can be found on the following page on my website:-

Making Every Photon Count

On behalf of the Admin team, I'd like to wish Steve the very best of luck with his book and thank you for the prize!

Ant