Originally posted by jocko_nc I don't follow ANY of that but would like to learn more...
Recommend any good reads on how people image through telescopes, technology since the late 70's?
Hi Jocko,
I didn't learn from a book so can't recommend any. I know there are good books out there. Perhaps someone will jump in with a suggestions.
I started out with a K1000 on a used 8 inch SCT 9still my main scope!). Here is an example with a K100D on the same 2000mm telescope. Thirty six frames of 2 minutes each.
http://pages.cthome.net/astroleo/m42-2.jpg
Your 1000mm Moon shot is very good for someone who claims not to understand astrophotography terminology.
If you want to get detail in craters on the Moon try when the Moon is 1/2 or less. When the Sun is at an angle the craters cast shadows.
Since faint astro objects are HARD to photograph there are many tricks to improve the image. The different types of frames I mentioned are:
Light frames - the actual photo of the object
Dark frames - as JayLawson mentioned, they are subtracted from the light frames to reduce noise. Rather then use up your time under the stars with NR you can take your own darks at a later time. For my astro camera I'd enough 15 minute darks to last till daybreak and go to bed.
Bias frames - shortest exposure possible, used to remove an offset from the image intensity.
Flat frames - taken of a flat light field to measure what camera sees as white. Flats are divided into the lights to remove dust spots, vignetting, and other flaws. Since you can't always get all the dust off the sensor, flats will fix them.
Flat darks - used to remove noise from the flats.
Many frames of each type are taken. When multiple frames are averaged the noise goes down but the signal stays the same, thus the S/N ratio improves.
For starting out you can just let the camera do NR for you and not worry about the other stuff.