Astrophotography: Science and Art

Students in ASTR 3090 “Observational Astronomy” learned to take celestial images using a variety of techniques. The first and simplest was using their cell phone camera, held by a special clamp to align it with the optical axis of an 8-inch diameter f/10 telescope [A]. The second was to take a high-speed video using a specialized CMOS  camera at that telescope, then run the video through software that pulls out the best-quality images, aligns them, and combines them into a high-resolution still image [B]. Finally, Jacob Beavon used his DSLR camera to capture sequences of images over time and stacked them to produce star trail images [C].