Equipment
Setup
Telescope
Polar Alignment
What is polar alignment and why is it so important? With a German Equatorial mount you need to make sure you are perfectly aligned to Polaris when you are in the northern hemisphere. This ensures your mount has the best chance of accurately tracking your chosen objects. Without correct alignment you will find that your […]
Read More
Astrophotography
Nature
Night
Photos
Setup
The Astrophotography Stack
Unlike with traditional photography when we are imaging the night sky there isn’t much light hitting the sensor of your camera. We overcome this by taking multiple images (subs) of our target and then take calibration frames to reduce noice and vignetting. It’s not quite as simple as point and shoot! So what are these […]
Read More
Nature
Night
Panaromic
Photos
Sometimes You Get Lucky!
Does a sunset count as astrophotography…? I’m not sure it quite does but sometimes you have to bend the rules and this is my website so I make the rules 🙂 This photo was one of those moment where you just happen to be in the right place at the right time with the right […]
Read More
Night
Panaromic
Photos
Time For A Timelapse
Just to show I don’t only take deep sky images here is a nice timelapse I took of the fog rolling into the valley of Geneva & Annemasse in Switzerland/France. There are some stars there as well so it’s sort of Astrophotography… I setup my camera on my friends balcony and set it going while […]
Read More
Night
Photos
M42 Orion Nebula
This is my first post about a specific target. It is one of the most photographed targets in the night sky due to it’s relative ease to make it look good! The image you see above is my current best image of Orion but in this post I am going to go through my progress […]
Read More
Equipment
Night
Telescope
Kit List
So thats the basics of the kit I use… You can see it assembled in the previous blog post. So lets go through and see what I’ve got at the moment… Telescope I have the SkyWatcher Expolorer 130PDS reflector as my main imaging scope. This has a 650mm focal length and a 130mm primary mirror […]
Read More
Night
Welcome & Introduction
Hello and welcome to Simon Dodd Astrophotography. This is basically a place for me to share my images of the night sky. There will also be options to be able to purchase my images as posters, framed pictures and maybe even mugs! So how did this all start? My Dad decided to buy a telescope […]
Read More