Astrophotography

Astrophotography has been a big passion of mine since I was in middle school. Looking back, I have always been interested in outer space ever since I was a little kid. After a momentary fascination of becoming a fire fighter and a cartoon artist, I always thought about becoming an astronomer well into my high school days. I remember this particular conversation with the headmaster of my school, who asked me what I wanted to become. Having been in Canada for less than a year, I said "astrologist" with my poor English skills. I can still remember the dumbfounded look on her face because the school was highly religious. I ended up having to verbally explain the specific things I want to do until she finally corrected me to say "astronomer".

Before I purchased my DSLR, due to a lack of Bulb mode on my camera, I could not really get into astrophotography. Even after getting my DSLR, it took a while for me to pick up astrophotography because I did not have a built-in intervalometer, which lets me take a multiple exposures automatically. The downside of having an aging CCD sensor is that it is prone to overheating from prolonged exposure, which introduces more noise to the image. Once I upgrade to a camera with a newer sensor with higher sensitivity, I will be able to take pictures of the milky way with less noise and without creating star trails as I did in the picture above during Perseids meteor shower in 2010.

Below is an example of sensor condensation from overheating sensor in my camera.



It is often difficult to find dark night sky because of light pollution from urban areas. It is my goal to visit one of the dark sky preserves and really appreciate the magnitude of the universe.