What is this place and why are there so many stars? ✨
Hey, I'm Christian () and I'm a space / tech / photography enthusiast from Bavaria, Germany.
First of, welcome to my website! On here it's all about astrophotography, photos of deep sky objects (DSO) and things I truly enjoy!
Please keep in mind that this site is still under construction and I'm just doing this as a hobby motivated by passion <3
On this website I want to share information about
- astrophotography
- blog posts
- my gallery
- my gear
- (potentially) tips to help you advance further within the depths of this hobby 🤔
- (potentially) something about music, guitars and stuff 🤔
Be sure to check out my gallery of astro images!
How it all started...
I have started astrophotography in 2017 when I got my first telescope. Well, not really astrophotography, but rather astronomy / stargazing. This was during my time at university so I still had quite some time back then (those were the days...). Thinking back, these were almost endless summers where I could bring my first telescope out in the field and observe the nightsky.
It was a Skywatcher Newton reflector scope (1200mm,F/8, see first image top left) and I remember how happy I was the first time seeing Jupiter and Saturn through the eyepiece! I definetely recommend anyone if you get the chance to look through a telescope - DO IT! I got hooked right away!
I started by gazing at the craters, valleys and seas (called "mare") of the moon until I wanted to check out deep sky objects (DSO's). When you have no clue of what you do and your mount possesses no handy GoTo-functionality, it can be quite tricky to get a DSO in front of your scope - especially when using high focal lengths and eyepieces with huge magnification. I was soooo happy when I first saw and identified a pair of galaxies with my own eyes! (if I recall correctly it was the Sombrero Galaxy)
And that was the point where I wanted to photograph what I saw in the sky!
As you might guess, it's not really easy to photograph anything in the sky for a complete beginner. I started out by taking images with my smartphone through the eyepiece of the telescope - but the quality is rather...bad (see above image of the moon). Then I got myself an adapter to swap out the eyepiece for a DSLM camera (digital single lens mirrorless camera) I borrowed from my dad and mounted it onto the scope. Finding focus was one difficult task, as well as finding the target in the nights sky. Due to earths rotation, the target was moving out of my frame, too! It was as if the world did not want you to take images of the nightsky! :D
But as with everything in life, you learn through your failures: Cancel earths rotation by using a motorized mount; Find focus by using a focus mask (e.g. Bahtinov mask); Find the target by using the star-hopping method. Et voila: I was able to take images of stars - one particular cluster: M45 - the Pleiades (see last image).
