Making Beautiful Deep-Sky Images - Astrophotography with Affordable Equipment and Software

This book is based around the author's beautiful and sometimes awe-inspiring color images and mosaics of deep-sky objects. The book describes how similar 'Hubble class' images can be created by amateur astronomers in their back garden using commercially available telescopes and CCD cameras. Subsequent processing and image enhancement in the 'electronic darkroom' is covered in detail as well. A range of telescopes and equipment is considered, from the author's 11-inch with Hyperstar camera, down to more affordable instruments. Appendices provide links to free software - not available from a single source - and are themselves an invaluable resource.


Professor Greg Parker was Head of the Nanoscale Systems Integration Group at Southampton University in southern England until his recent retirement. His deep-sky astronomical images have been published in Astronomy Now and Sky at Night magazines. He is the author of Introductory Semiconductor Device Physics (IOP, ISBN 0750310219), and has written many scientific papers and articles, mostly in the area of photonics and optoelectronics, as well as a chapter (Guided-wave Optical Communications: Materials) in Elsevier's Encyclopaedia of Materials: Science & Technology.