I was born in 1973 and live in the very Southeastern part of the Netherlands. Not a particular suitable place for astrophotography because of substantial light pollution due to artificial lighting, but it will have to do. Astronomy has been part of my life since 1994, this was also the year in which I bought my first telescope, a Meade 10″ Starfinder Newtonian.

As of 2003, I started out with astrophotography mainly because of the introduction of the digital camera and the wish to record, show and share the views through a telescope. As the Netherlands feature a formidable amount of light pollution and unique climatological challenges (= lots of rain) it turned out to be quite a frustrating experience from time to time.

Astrophotography is a specialized type of photography that enables one to record images of astronomical objects. Besides being able to record the details of objects in our own solar system such as the Moon and the planets, astrophotography also provides a unique opportunity to capture objects which would otherwise be invisible to the human eye such as nebulae and galaxies. This is done by taking (very) long exposures as digital cameras can accumulate and record light photons over longer periods of time.

Currently my main interest lies in deep sky photography, I have imaged some planets in the past, but currently I am focused primarily on imaging the deep sky.

A lot of equipment has come and gone over the years, currently I work with a 10″ Newtonian reflector (from Orion UK, not the Meade anymore) and a 80mm apochromatic refractor for deepsky astrophotography. My imaging mount is a Losmandy G-11 upgraded with Gemini Goto as well as having an Ovision worm in the RA axis.
I am currently taking images with a monochrome SBIG ST-8300M CCD camera, after having used standard (unmodified) DSLRs (both Canon 20D and 350D) as well as simple point-and-shoot camera’s and webcams for several years.

Astrophotography is everything but easy, but it is a fun, unique and challenging aspect of this hobby.
The learning curve for astrophotography is quite steep, and I learn new things (and often make new mistakes) with every image taken.

The results of my efforts can be seen on this site.

Thank you for stopping by, I hope you enjoy your visit !

 

Raimond Lony