How to Photograph the Moon and Planets with Your Digital Camera

Although astronomical CCD cameras can be very costly, digital cameras – the kind you use on holiday – on the other hand, are relatively inexpensive. Moreover, their technology – especially thermal noise, sensitivity (ISO number) and resolution – has progressed to a point where such cameras are more than capable of photographing the brighter astronomical objects.

Now Tony Buick has teamed up with fellow author and astro imager Phil Pugh, to produce a completely revised, updated, and extended second edition to How to Photograph the Moon and Planets with your Digital Camera, first published in 2006. The revisions take into account changing (and improving) camera technology, and some items which are now available commercially but which previously had to be home-made. The section of solar observing has been expanded to include observing by H-alpha light, and among the many additional sections are photographing the constellations, aurorae, and basic post-imaging processing.

Although Tony Buick in his career worked in medical, veterinary, and agricultural science, specializing in analytical chemistry, he turned to his lifelong interest in astronomy following an early retirement and has encouraged the younger generation to observe and understand the sky while teaching science, computing, and geography. His fascination with the Moon was given a further boost through his friendship with Sir Patrick Moore, which led to the publication of the first edition of How to Photograph the Moon and Planets with your Digital Camera. Buick has a wide range of interests, from the ‘infinitesimal’ under a microscope to the ‘infinite’ through a telescope and has published articles on tardigrades, the robust microscopic animals that can even survive for a while in space, in addition to articles on the Moon. His latest book for Springer, The Rainbow Sky, published in 2009, is a product of Buick’s interest in spectroscopy and color in general throughout the universe. Philip Pugh is a technical instructor in telecommunications. He was born in England and became interested in astronomy at age six, using his first telescope at the age of 9. However, by the age of 14, he had reached the limit of what could be done with a modest instrument. Philip majored in mathematics and worked as a computer programmer. Competitive chess and bridge had replaced astronomy as a hobby, and it was through fishing that he first became a published writer, in 1980, with a spoof about fishing for minnows. As his expertise in work improved, he started writing for computing magazines, culminating in a twelve-part series for a magazine. He married in 1989 and had a daughter in 1990. It was a view of Venus and trip to an observatory in New Zealand that rekindled his interest in astronomy, and in 1995, he was given a pair of binoculars for his 40th birthday. He was soon learning his way around the easier deep sky objects and following the moons of Jupiter. A small telescopefollowed in 1997 and a portable one in 1999. It seemed only natural that he would write about astronomy, and the articles soon began to flow. It was the Coronado Personal Solar Telescope that his wife and daughter presented him for his 50th birthday that led to his first book, Observing the Sun with Coronado Telescopes. Philip has experimented extensively with compact digital cameras. He has also researched the Messier objects. Philip no longer competes in chess or bridge and has not been fishing for a few years, but he now has the opportunity to view the sky from many different places. His interest in astrophotography spawned an interest in general photography, and he has collected many “tourist” shots from around the world.