Astrophotography – a different league

As an amateur astronomer with a very poor grasp of the science attached, and particularly the maths, I am eternally grateful and utterly amazed by the photos produced with fairly small (non-observatory) telescopes. The astrophotographers who snatch these views of immensely distant objects are masters of technology, using computers, telescopes, cellphones and other gadgets to record images that we previously relied on the Hubble Space Telescope to relay. I am attaching a few of these for your enjoyment, with kind permission of the photographers.

There is little of excitement out there in February – just the normal sunrise, sunset, moon going round the Earth, Venus, Jupiter and Saturn a little too low in the East to follow the action there. Keep going outside on a clear, dark night and looking up – you don’t need a major astronomical event to experience the beauty and utter silence of the stars!

The following photos are by Dieter Willasch (Astro-Cabinet.com)