One of my favorite hobbies is astronomy. I own two telescopes that I use to view the sun (with a sun filter), moon, planets, and some of the brighter deep sky objects from my driveway, despite the light pollution here in Woodbury, Minnesota.
I have taken some digital photos of the sun (using a solar filter), the moon, the planets, and some deep sky objects through my telescope. I use a Nikon Coolpix 4300 and attach it to my telescope using the Scopetronix digital camera adapter. The adapter holds the camera lens to lens with the eyepiece.
I use the manual settings on the Nikon Coolpix 4300. I set the exposure to about 1/30 second for Mars, 1/30 second for Jupiter, and 1/15 second for Saturn. I use the Nikon MC-EU1 Remote Release Cord to take the photos to avoid any vibration.
I try to take many photos of each planet, choose the best among those, and then use Images Plus to digitally combine and enhance those photos into a single higher quality result. This reduces noise and brings out more detail in the image. These photos of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn are typical of what you would see through my telescope at about 240x magnification.
The moon is much easier to photograph. This photo is a single exposure of 1 second at 48x magnification, taken during a lunar eclipse. The moon is passing through the earth's shadow.
The sun is also an easy subject to photograph, although there is not nearly as much detail as the moon. This photo is the result of stacking two photos at 1/1000 secs at 75x magnification taken using a solar filter. Many nice sunspots are visible.
A telescope is not always needed for astrophotography. This photo was taken of a bright meteor during the November 2002 Leonid meteor shower. It is a single 24 second exposure with no special digit processing. Click the photo for a closer look at the meteor trail.
And sometimes you don't even need to go outside to do astronomy. This photo of a lunar eclipse on February 20, 2008 was taken out my bathroom window! Click on the image for a full size image.
