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Space Photos Taken From Shed Stun Astronomers
krou writes "Amateur astronomer Peter Shah has stunned astronomers around the world with amazing photos of the universe taken from his garden shed. Shah spent £20,000 on the equipment, hooking up a telescope in his shed to his home computer, and the results are being compared to images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. 'Most men like to putter about in their garden shed,' said Shah, 'but mine is a bit more high tech than most. I have fitted it with a sliding roof so I can sit in comfort and look at the heavens. I have a very modest set up, but it just goes to show that a window to the universe is there for all of us – even with the smallest budgets. I had to be patient and take the images over a period of several months because the skies in Britain are often clouded over and you need clear conditions.' His images include the Monkey's head nebula, M33 Pinwheel Galaxy, Andromeda Galaxy and the Flaming Star Nebula, and are being put together for a book."
Information found:
He used an ORION OPTICS UK AG8 Astrograph and a STARLIGHT XPRESS SXV-H16 CCD.
http://www.astropix.co.uk/equipment.html
...go here for more pic of his setup. I can totally see where that £20k went. http://www.opticstar.com/Run/Astronomy/Astro-Editorial-Articles-General.asp?p=0_10_19_1_6_10
There's info on the telescope and CCD here
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
It takes quite a while to collect enough light from 100s of light years away in order to create a usable image.
For example, looking through my 6" telescope you can't see any nebula's like in pictures. Another thing they do is take multiple images and stack them together to amplify the signal and minimize the noise.
As someone who processes Hubble data for viewing (I am working on one right now), pretty much every image you see like the ones he show are "enhanced". They are taken through (generally) 3 narrow band filters for nebulae, and 3 wide band for galaxies. If you check his images, he even shows what filters he used.
And NASA isn't the only group putting out viewable Hubble images. The ESA publishes quite a few (which get published through the Hubble Heritage site). Check out www.spacetelescope.org. The lovely full view of Orion was done by them.
No matter where you go, there you are. So Enjoy it.
Indeed, as an astrophotographer I can say his images are high quality and I'm sure the comparison with Hubble is not his own. We know better than that... I use an even simpler setup (Losmandy GM-8, Canon 300mm f/2.8 Lens or 20cm Newtonian f/4.5 and modified Canon 20D camera) and even those images get compared to Hubble by people. That setup cost me less than 5k euros.
Hubble is about science, astrophotography as you get to see it is about "pretty pictures". We get as much sciene return as a casual wildlife photographer... By accident we may discover something (and we all dream of it...). Hubble press releases are "pretty pictures" as well; but usually distilled from valuable scientific data.
There are a lot of amateurs contributing to science, but you don't get too see much of them. Tom Boles for example has discovered over 120 supernova's (from Britain) and has been featured in the media (BBC). And he's picked a hot subject. Many others monitor asteroids, variable stars, faint comets and will never get noticed by a news channel...
His and astrophotographers' work is important though to popularize science. I myself got started by seeing images of the sky in books. Now I'm making them myself...
I'm sorry, but his pics just aren't that great compared to other amateur imagers.
Compare Peter Shah's image of M42 with Rob Gendler's. Or how about this even more stunning one captured by Tony and Daphne Hallas with a 6" refractor at the Winter Star Party.
IMHO, Peter Shah's self promotion is more impressive than his images.
a major difference here is that he is taking these in RGB, whereas the hubble pictures are usually shown to us in false color. (taken in other wavelengths for scientific purposes, like studying what the nebulae are composed of)
so really, from a strictly photographic perspective, yes, this guy's pictures are better, because they show what the thing *really* looks like.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
Most amateur level astronomical CCDs (amateur is a relative term in this case) are pretty low resolution. The SBIG ST-7 I use for the observatory I run is only around 800x600. For this kind of equipment you're not looking for number of pixels nearly as much as low noise, good cooling, and pixels that are sized right for the optics you're running.
When the parent refers to resolution, he means the angular size of each pixel, not the sheer number of pixels. This is a function of aperture size and atmospheric clarity -- all the CCD can do is take maximum advantage of whats available by making each pixel about half of what can be resolved by the optics.