Solar System Photos

Stephen Heliczer FRAS

Deep Space Photos

My interest in astrophotography began about ten years ago after a life-long but rather casual interest in astronomy. Soon after joining Hertford Astronomy Group I discovered that even with basic equipment and a little practice one can take incredible pictures of the universe, even from a heavily light polluted suburban garden. Starting with an inexpensive telescope you can clearly see some of the cloud-bands and moons of Jupiter, the beautiful rings of Saturn and detailed craters of the Moon, which are all spectacular and inspiring sights. However astrophotography allows one to capture the faintest of objects in the night sky including galaxies and nebulas, usually not visible even through a large professional telescopes. A telescope is a time machine, and one can take images of galaxies as they appeared millions of years ago! It has been very encouraging to see how my images have improved over time and are now often superior to images taken by professional observatory telescopes just a few decades ago. The advancement of high quality, but mass produced optical equipment and the latest generation of incredibly sensitive astrophotography dedicated C-MOS cameras, plus new image processing techniques has made this possible. What better way to learn about the universe than to capture and view images you have taken of distant planets, nebulae and galaxies located at unfathomably large distances away from us? And all taken from my back garden. Follow me on Instagram @heliczer and here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/ugpa4upifm7oSVED7

Galaxy Photos